What more can be done to stop people treating 7cups as a Dating App

@Fristo As you say, this issue is well known. The earliest thread about it I can find was from August 2014—about 6½ years ago:

just today i had been connected with an active listener who had only been on the site for two days and told me that he was originally there to find dating opportunities? i mean really?

I don't think there's been much progress since then.

Resistance to change

A fundamental issue with anything like this is that 7 Cups apparently resists changing anything based on discussions in the community. So, for practical purposes, discussing any issue here is very unlikely to result in a solution.

Cultural differences

To say, in this context, that "more is required to make 7cups a healthier place" seems to imply that dating is unhealthy.

I suspect it would be more accurate to acknowledge that dating is regarded as unhealthy in some cultures, tolerable in some others, and extremely healthy and normal in others. 7 Cups has to avoid trying to impose any of these points of view, so that everyone can be at peace within their own cultural setting.

This can be difficult for listeners who aim to provide emotional support, because the listener's cultural context sometimes differs from the member's. However, there's a clear boundary between informing a member that using 7 Cups for dating doesn't work as a matter of fact, and imposing any personal or cultural viewpoint.

The size of the problem

It's difficult to estimate how much of a problem dating really is at 7 Cups. Personally, I have never had any offer of a date here I do often read people's profiles, and I hardly ever see a profile that looks like the kind of profile anyone would seriously put on a dating site.

In order to understand the problem better, it would be useful to be able to measure it. What percentage of new members or listeners come to 7 Cups looking for dates? I have no idea, and I don't know how to find out.

When I searched the Internet briefly just now, I didn't see anyone recommending 7 Cups as a dating site, although I did learn something about the 7 of Cups Tarot card!

In a love reading, Seven of cups tarot card denotes searching online for love.

I don't think this is very significant, though.

Another factor is that one listener who unsuccessfully tries to date, say, 40 members, might cause 40 complaints, when the true size of the problem is just one person.

Overall, my personal impression is that relatively few people really try to use 7 Cups for dating.

False impressions

Another difficulty is that some people might give the impression they are looking for a date, when really they are looking for companionship, friendship or sexual fantasy.

For example, suppose a member is lonely and genuinely lacks companionship, but because of their culture and upbringing they feel ashamed about it. They might try to present themselves as looking for a date, because they feel that's more socially acceptable.

It's difficult for listeners to deal with this, because it means being accepting of the person and understanding their needs, while at the same time maintaining clear boundaries. Ideally, a listener would empathically understand, and respond to, the member's underlying loneliness and need for companionship without being triggered into rejection by the superficial dating stuff.

Meeting needs

If we assume that a lot of people do come to 7 Cups looking for companionship, friendship, sexual fantasy or dates, and if we also admit that 7 Cups cannot provide these, then the responsible thing for us to do would be to direct those people to other websites where they can find what they want.

We could do this by putting together a list of companionship, friendship, sexual fantasy and dating websites or apps that trusted members of our community have validated and believe to be genuine, and then refer people to the list, just like we do when a member appears to be in a crisis.

Charlie

@RarelyCharlie I'd disagree about dating being a cultural aspect. We might validate bad elements calling it culture, but the bitter truth remains what it is. Dating, without a doubt, is the degradation of human relations. And that is the exact reason why it is discouraged at positive places such as 7cups. If it were good and positive, why not allow and embrace it. But clearly, allowing it would break boundaries in an instant and the place will be reduced to a brothel.

Also, I don't believe any good culture exists today which discards dating completely, and that is the sad reality of the day.

@Fristo Thanks for tagging, for expressing your concern(s), and your noble intention to make 7cups a safer place.
@RarelyCharlie Thanks for your pragmatic views on the matter.

Let's start with what we all can agree on:
- All cultures, to some extent, acknowledge dating as a part of their lifestyle.
- 7cups does not condone dating, it condones 'dating on 7cups' and for understandable reasons.
- Female listeners have to bear a lot more than what they signed up for, due to members and fellow listeners rife with inappropriate advances.
- Dating/Attraction/Sexual feelings are natural instincts. No amount of rules and regulations can "Stop" it. At best, what we can do is portray its ill effects on 7cups and let people decide for themselves.
- There are around 2.5 million members and about 0.5 million listeners on 7cups. But only a small fraction of it frequents the chatrooms or forums or both.
- 7cups has always been reluctant on making technical changes.
- 7cups is not perfect, we have to make do with what we have.

Devil's advocate:
7cups sometimes, makes some weird decisions. One of them is censoring the word like "tinder". Many members do wanna talk about what happened with them related to tinder as tinder is the most popular dating app. There is no way one can share their tinder "id" or anything like that. So, censoring the word tinder alone makes it senseless and not censoring something like "Whatsapp" makes it even more so.
At the same time, banning people just based on censors, is what 7cups believes as "fair". Even though it doesn't really curtail the issue at hand, it is given too much value. It only helps weed out a fraction of a fraction. What it mainly does is agitate them and make them question the privacy of the site, along with finding workarounds. Even if someone is banned, there is no way to stop them from making another account and return. *shrugs*
Reminds me of a quote "Best governance is the least governance"

Being said that, here is my humble suggestion to discourage dating/sexting on 7cups:

It's true that dating/sexting has its fair share of ill effects. My suggestion would be to bring those ill effects out. Let people share their experience of ill effects publicly but anonymously. How female listeners have to go through excruciating mental health issues due to it, how things like these on 7cups make people lose their faith in what 7cups stands for, how crushing on someone or attempting to finding a partner on 7cups impacted their mental health, etc.
We can introduce a project similar to Anonymous Appreciations. We can call it "Ill Effects Of Ill Intentions" or something like that.
Project Highlights:
- There will be a form for people to share their experience of "Ill Effects Of Ill Intentions" anonymously.
- The submissions will be reviewed by the project handler or a team anonymously.
- It will be posted as frequent as possible in the "Ill Effects Of Ill Intentions" mainpost which will be posted in such a forum that it is open to read to all or as many users as possible.
- It will be posted through an anonymous account like @7CupsCommunity or any Com-Mods' profile.
- Basic guidelines will be in place like not revealing any names, not blaming 7cups, and not revealing to much details about the chat or the person (not following them will lead to not posting).
- And finally, making the knowledge available to all by adding it in the flash info messages that appear between member chats and chatrooms so they can read and decide for themselves if they still wanna go through with it.
- Also, if the project leader decides, the link to alternative sites can be provided as @rarelyCharlie suggested.

I invite community manager, @Tazzie to share their views and take the lead on the project, if they find it fit.

Tagging few more leaders to share their views and take on the project @Asilentobserver @Evelynrose @Heather225 @Hope @Laura @Mango3 @MistyMagic @MidnightRaven99 @Power

Thank you

@DonaldDraper

Informative and well written. Thank you for your inputs.

@Fristo

I think that if the process of becoming a listener is made more humane and slightly difficult, it will prevent people from randomly selecting it and qualifying without genuine motivation. They don't have to be perfect, but if they are truly motivated to become a listener, they will be able to manage it.

Furthermore, I have noticed that anyone can become a member by providing a fictitious email address. For instance, if someone uses "ejdjjdjdj@ndndn.djjd," it will be accepted as a valid email and they will have a new member account within seconds. I understand that there are various email platforms available, but we can at least make the process more accountable. If they know they will have to verify their email or go through some kind of OTP mechanism that doesn't allow temporary mail addresses for signup, it would be beneficial.

While this approach is not completely foolproof, it would make the account creation process more accountable. People would not be able to create fake accounts within seconds, unless they go through the tedious process of verification.