Government Holds Sydney Roundtable On Dating App Safety

Executives of dating apps will sit down with senior Government officials in Sydney today, to discuss concerns around sexual violence.

Communications Minister Michelle Rowland will hold a national roundtable on Online Dating Safety in a bid to improve the safety for Australian users.

In a tweet, Rowland says "Australians deserve to live free from harassment and all forms of violence".

The Sydney seminar will address research figures, sitting down with representatives from apps Bumble, Grindr and Tinder.

State and territory ministers will join in the discussion, amid calls for the government to tighten laws against criminals using the apps to abuse victims.

Ms Rowland declared there's concerned around "unacceptable levels of abuse and harassment". 

"A key focus of this discussion will be to look at what industry is doing to prevent the exploitation of their services by perpetrators, to identify what more could be done to improve the safety of users, and to consider what further action is required by government and industry to support this," she said. 

It follows a report from the Australian Institute of Criminology, which highlighted a third of dating app users have experienced sexual violence in person since 2017.

"In October, the Australian Institute of Criminology released a new report that reveals three in every four survey respondents had been victims of some form of sexual violence in the past five years, perpetrated by someone they communicated with on a dating app or website," the government wrote in a statement. 

"The national roundtable will bring together stakeholders to examine policy, regulatory and technology settings that can improve protections for those using online dating apps and websites, and stop perpetrators who are determined to exploit these services to cause harm."

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