Hinge's India screenshot block covers the profile screens women use to vet dates

In September, dating coach Chad Franklin posted a video of a client's Hinge text exchange, the one where the pair discussed the need to "flirt over some margaritas" ^[4]. He has 512,000 TikTok followers, and his clients pay upwards of $5,000 ^[5]. Sometimes the way he pitches to that audience is by posting his clients' private messages ^[5]. "People are aware that they could be the next haha moment, but that doesn't mean they deserve it," he told Wired ^[15].

Hinge's India test is aimed at profile surfaces, a different screen from Franklin's videos ^[6]. Wired's report does not list the message thread among the blocked surfaces ^[6].

Hinge told Wired the test is part of an effort to help singles build trust with each other and with the platform ^[8]. Users take profile screenshots for opposite reasons. One is the public dunk. Wired described a firestorm of reaction across social media last week ^[11], and several of the people it quoted welcomed the block. Writer Tres Dean wrote on X: "I actually think this might be the first ethical development in online dating in years if not ever." ^[12] Kiara, a Florida creator who has posted screenshots shaming men she found hypersexual or "super disrespectful," said in a TikTok video that she understands the change ^[13].

The other reason is safety. For some women, screenshotting a profile has become a necessary precaution when vetting a potential match, Wired reported ^[3]. "Privacy's in tension with safety. Screenshots can document inappropriate behavior or allow someone to check in with a friend before meeting a stranger," said Lizzie Li, a communications researcher ^[1].

A screenshot block cannot see why someone took the capture. It only knows which screen is open. A 2025 study in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication suggested that screenshots let a recipient permanently store and redistribute private conversations without the original sender's knowledge or consent, and called the result "privacy turbulence" ^[14]. On that standard, a friend check and a public dunk have the same consent problem.

For a team weighing the same feature, two things sort the cases: who will see the capture, one trusted person or the public, and what it shows, a profile or a conversation. The dunk Hinge is aiming at is a profile shown to the public. Send the same profile to one friend and it becomes the safety check Li describes, taken on the same screens ^[1]. Franklin's format is a conversation posted publicly ^[4]. Showing a conversation to one friend is asking what a text meant. Because the block is tied to screens, it removes the whole profile column. The harm Dean and Kiara describe sits in one box of that column.

I'd build the one-person route before closing the screen, meaning an in-app way to send a profile to a named contact. The tradeoff is that this is itself a sharing feature, and a friend who receives the profile can still pass it on. A drop in screenshots in the test market would only show that the block works. Two things would show whether it built the trust Hinge says it wants ^[8]: whether users there keep their accounts, and whether reports of bad behavior before first dates go up or down.