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Tinder Blocked Anti-Violence Campaign that Made Woman Look Beaten

The company swiped left on this provocative campaign.
Norwegian actress Trine Ruud Grønningen, posing for the Plan International Campaign. (Image: Olina Søyland Bru)

On Sunday, Maria hopped on Tinder and in roughly and hour and a half, she got around 700 matches.

Bru, however, wasn't trying to hook up with any of them, nor to go on a date. Her profile also was somewhat unusual. Her main picture was just a normal portrait. But the second one showed her face severely beaten up.

Maria wasn't really hurt though, and her name wasn't even Maria. The fake profile was part of a campaign prepared by the non profit organization Plan International Norway and the PR company Trigger to denounce violence against young women and school girls.

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The campaign, launched on Sunday, aimed to flood the internet with images of violence, using "all available digital channels," and Kjell Erik Øie, the Secretary General of Plan International Norway said in a statement.

Tinder apparently didn't want to be among those channels.

Within roughly 30 minutes using Maria's profile, trying to match her with as many men as possible, Olina Søyland Bru, the creative advisor at Trigger who was actually controlling the account received a notification that her account had been reported to the dating social network for using "inappropriate images," and "bad behavior," according to screenshots shared with Motherboard. (Tinder did not respond to requests for comment.)

Other than the beaten-up picture of Maria, the account also had another picture, a digital poster denouncing violence, and linking to the NGO's campaign. When someone matched up with Maria, he'd also receive a message, asking him to join the cause.

While collecting matches, Max Berg, who worked with Trigger on the campaign, said they kept receiving warnings—one of them said: "You must stop." Finally, after another hour, the account was suspended.

For Nina Bull Jørgensen, a communications advisor at Plan International, this was disappointing.

"We didn't do it just to shock—no. We did it, in a way, to wake up people. In what way can we wake up people to see a reality that exists, and that is brutal?" Bull Jørgensen told Motherboard in an interview. "In world with freedom of expression we should be allowed to do that."

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As part of the campaign, Plan International also posted a fictional video depicting young women being harassed and and beaten up in school. The group tried to promote and boost it on Facebook, but the social network's ads team rejected it, arguing that "the image or video thumbnail may shock or evoke negative response from viewers."

Facebook did not respond to Motherboard's request for comment.

Bull Jørgensen said that Tinder and Facebook's "censorship" shows how much power these platforms have in "defining the reality" for their users.

"It seems like they don't want their channel to be used for this kind of causes," she said. "But it's a reality that is out there."