Would background checks make dating apps safer?

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Match Group, the largest dating app conglomerate in the US, doesn’t perform background checks on any of its apps’ free users. A BuzzFeed News report today highlights a few incidents in which registered sex offenders went on dates with women who had no idea they were talking to a convicted criminal. These men then raped the women on their dates, leaving the women to report them to the police and to the apps’ moderators. These women expect