A new service called Tea App Green Flags offers to remove negative posts about men from private women's dating safety apps and groups, like the Tea app and "Are We Dating the Same Guy" Facebook groups, for a fee. The anonymous founder, "Jay," claims the service ethically targets defamatory posts (e.g., about appearance) but refuses clients accused of serious offenses like sexual assault by multiple credible sources.
The operation highlights the ongoing conflict in online dating, where women use private groups for safety and men seek to counter or infiltrate these spaces. It also underscores vulnerabilities within these platforms, as the Tea app itself was founded by a man and suffered a major data breach.
Key topics covered include the service's business model and claims, the ethical boundaries stated by its operator, and the broader tensions between anonymity for safety and the potential for defamation in digital dating communities.
Tea App Green Flags, a service that claims it can “protect your digital reputation,” will remove negative posts about men from private online groups where women share “red flags” about men they’ve dated in order to help other women.
The service is another escalation in the age of online dating, women attempting to protect each other from other men in the dating pool, and instances of men fighting against those efforts. It also shows how some of these allegedly private women’s groups, especially the Tea app, are regularly infiltrated and manipulated by men.
When I reached out to an email listed on Tea App Green Flags’s site, I got a call from a man behind the operation who identified only as Jay. He said he started the service about two years ago, and that he initially focused on the Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups. For the past year, he’s been offering services specifically for the Tea app, a “dating safety” app for women that suffered a devastating breach last year, and which my investigation revealed, was founded by a man who wanted to monetize the Are We Dating the Same guy phenomenon. The site also claims it can remove posts from Tea app copycat for men TeaOnHer, as well as posts on Instagram.
Jay declined to say how much revenue the site generates, but claims he gets about 50 to 60 calls a day and currently has six employees. On its website, Tea App Green Flags claims it has removed more than 2,500 posts on the Tea app for 759 clients. Jay said that most of his clients are men, but that some are women who are trying to take down posts about their husbands or boyfriends.
Potential clients can pay $1.99 to report one account and up to $79.99 to report 25 accounts.
“We just want to take down posts about people who are being defamed,” Jay told me. “And when I say defamed, it means like, ‘this guy has a small penis,’ or ‘this guy smells.’ That doesn't fit the mission statement of what the Tea app was for, which is to warn women against people who are harmful, who are abusive, who are cheaters. We've noticed that a lot of the individuals that come to us, almost all of them, come to us for little stupid things.”
Clients interested in Tea App Green Flags’s services go to the site and fill out a form with their information and information about the posts they want removed. The company reviews the case and then starts the “takedown process,” which can take between 21-30 days. Tea App Green Flags says it will then continue to monitor posts about the client and remove them for three months.
When I asked Jay how this “takedown process” works he said “I can’t give that info. That’s the business.”
Jay told me that he would not work with clients who have been accused of sexual assault by multiple people on the Tea app, or by one person in one of the Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups who used their real name and face in a profile picture.
“Sometimes we find along the process that there are pedophiles or people who actually did what they did, and they're very bad,” Jay said. “So we say, we're not doing this. We can't take a rap for that. We're ethical. We just want to take down people who are being defamed.”
Jay told me he understands why Facebook groups like Are We Dating the Same Guy are necessary and thinks they are a good idea, but the anonymous nature of the Tea app "causes a cesspool of defamation.”
When I asked Jay what he thinks about the fact that some women don’t feel safe sharing information about some dangerous men unless they can do so anonymously, he said it would be better if women showed their face, or if the Tea app at least gave women that option.
“I have a Tea app account. I'm a dude. All my reps have Tea app accounts. They're men,” Jay said. “How much can you trust these people and what they're doing?”
One reason the Tea app hack was so dangerous is because the app used to ask women to upload a picture of their face in order to verify that they are women. Those images were posted all over the internet because of the hack, putting those women at risk and leading to more harassment.
Tea App Green Flags is far from the first attempt from men trying to fight back against these types of groups. In 2024, for example, we wrote about a man who tried to sue women who posted about him in Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups. His first case was dismissed, and he refiled days later as a class action lawsuit; later that year, he was sent to prison for tax fraud.
Tea did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Meridiano
