Tea for Women, a gossip app for only women that is widely used on the University of Oregon campus, draws defamation and slander concerns from students. It has been removed from the Apple App Store due to privacy concerns.
Tea for Women is centered on women’s safety while dating, allowing women to post about men they know with either a “green” or “red” flag. Concern with Tea stems from fear of defamatory statements being posted anonymously.
Users must take a selfie of themselves to “verify” their identity as a woman. However, students say the verification process can be easily dodged.
Once accepted into the app, one can enter their zip code and proceed to search men by first name. A continuous stream of photos of men in the nearby area will appear. Accompanying the green and red flags is commentary that ranges in tone from encouraging to accusatory.
“If all we’re seeing is all the negative, or there’s an incentive to post the negative, whether it’s true or not right, what does that do to people’s reputations?” Bryce Newell, Faculty Director of the School of Journalism and Communications Honors Program and lawyer, said.
Key components of defamation are falsity, publication, identification and fault. Fault falls into two categories: negligence and actual malice. Actual malice only applies when the defendant is a public figure or entity, a private person wanting punitive damages or a person who knowingly published false information.
Negligence, would likely apply to the private, anonymous defendant on Tea:
“The person who claimed defamation would only have to show that the person was negligent, a lower legal standard,” Newell said.
As a result of the 1996 Communication Decency Act, social media companies can not be held liable for content posted on their sites. The anonymous nature of the apps prolongs the process, as the plaintiff, after initiating a lawsuit, must demand that the platform, Tea for Women, turn over the personal information of the Jane Doe defendant (IP address and location).
“It’s not uncommon for these sorts of things (lawsuits) to take a couple of years,” Newell said.
Director of the UO Domestic Violence Clinic Robin Runge’s largest concern with the app is “that it could falsely give someone a reason to believe that they’re going to be safer by using it.”
Runge worries if a user names a previous abuser, stalker, or “someone who has previously harmed them in any capacity” on the app, and this person gains access to her information “that places them in great risk.”
Women may be sharing prior harmful experience for the first time behind the presumed security of an anonymous account.
“The decision to seek help for someone who’s experienced this or disclose it to anyone is really difficult. In fact, that is the most dangerous time for that individual – when they disclose,” according to Runge.
Sean Molt, a family and lifestyle medicine physician at University Health Services said using these types of apps can have several mental health impacts.
“It’s this idea of kind of a social media consciousness of you never know when somebody is going to post a picture of you or write something about you, and so you always have to be kind of camera ready,” Molt said.
Presley Malech, UO sophomore, comments, “the anonymous aspect is what makes them (gossip apps) so enticing. By implying that both apps are anonymous, I think the messages, pictures, etc. on these apps have crossed a line.”
