How a Whisper Network for Online Dating Turned Divisive

The groups started appearing on Facebook a little over a year ago. They described themselves as safe spaces for women, meant for sounding the alarm on men “who might be liars, cheaters, abusers” or otherwise “toxic.” Soon, women all over the country were posting in their local “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” groups—describing men they’d matched with on dating apps, or asking for intel on others.

But as membership has skyrocketed, these private whisper networks have found themselves in the midst of an identity crisis. Moderators are struggling to enforce the groups’ rules about posting and sharing information. (First names and photos of the men described are allowed, but sending screenshots to people outside the groups isn’t.) Men are filing takedown requests to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, and starting their own groups, while some women are saying they’re only there for the “tea”—gossip about men in their cities.

The first group, founded in March 2022 for women in New York City, now has 113,000 members. Another, in Dallas-Fort Worth, has 120,000. There are more than 150 Are We Dating the Same Guy groups around the world, and more than a dozen “uncensored” versions with laxer moderation policies. But these forums intended to protect people have turned, for many, into something more like entertainment—and for others, a scourge. 

No Screenshots, No Last Names, No Libel

In 2005, a woman named Tasha Cunningham started an online forum called DontDateHimGirl.com. Members shared war stories about men they’d met the old-fashioned way—in bars and through friends, for instance—and on early dating sites like Match.com and JDate.

At its peak, DontDateHimGirl.com drew roughly a million members, Cunningham said, but she decided to shutter it in 2010. There were legal threats from men who had been written about on the forum, she said, and she was trying to focus on a separate business venture.

“It was just getting to be a little too much for me personally, and I decided I wanted to pivot away from that,” Cunningham said. 

The arrival of Tinder in 2012 revolutionized online dating while also introducing new concerns about safety. In recent years, dating companies have taken measures to give users peace of mind, such as adding the option to have a tool owned by the company run background checks on matches. Match Group, Tinder’s parent company, declined to comment.

Paola Sanchez, the creator of Are We Dating The Same Guy, has described similar reasons for launching the private Facebook groups. “I first started these groups to help solve some of the problems and dangers that me and my friends were experiencing with dating,” she wrote on a GoFundMe page created in March. (The page says Sanchez is raising funds to build an Are We Dating the Same Guy-style app. According to her GoFundMe, she has raised over $44,000.) In a recent update, she wrote that her groups, which also aim to be spaces for seeking relationship advice, had amassed more than 2.3 million members. Sanchez declined to comment for this article.

Like DontDateHimGirl, Are We Dating the Same Guy groups are geared toward straight women, who experience sexual harassment and violence at higher rates than straight men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Each group lists lengthy “Fight Club”-like rules its members must agree to as it tries to prevent the spread of information about men outside the groups, doxing—revealing identifying information such as addresses—and running up against Facebook’s moderation system. 

Screenshots of posts in the group are prohibited. Same goes for sharing men’s last names, social-media handles, phone numbers, addresses or other identifying information. Another rule states “no libel, defamation, or copyright infringement.” 

The guidelines instruct members to include “minimal to no detail” when making a post, providing examples like “Any tea?” or “Joe