This is Tinder’s new video chat feature, Face to Face

Tinder today introduces an important new feature: video calling. Face to Face, as the company calls its own video chats, does not require people to exchange private phone numbers and is being rolled out in 13 countries, including the US in Virginia, Illinois, Georgia and Colorado, such as Australia, Brazil and France. Not all members in these states and countries have access, only a select group. The team hopes to see how well the video calling works from a technical standpoint, such as how the servers handle it, before the feature is rolled out more widely, said Bernadette Morgan, senior product manager with Tinder’s trust and security team.

Face to Face differs from other video chat features in a number of ways. First, both people need to sign up for the call for it to happen. Once they tap the video icon in the right corner of the text chat screen, they are asked to sign up for video calls with the other person. After they and their match have done this, they can call. They can unsubscribe at any time.

Before they call, both people must agree to keep the call PG – that means no nudity or sexual content and no references to incitement to hatred, violence, or illegal activity. Once the conversation has started, users see the screen split in two, so the caller can always see themselves as big as the person they’re contacting. Morgan says this was done on purpose so people can make sure they still look good and don’t show anything in the background that they might not want to broadcast.

“We intentionally created this split screen so you know exactly what you look like on the other person’s phone so you can feel a little more comfortable,” she says. “And then we also hope it improves conversation. Having the same size allows you to see the other person [and] they can see you, so hopefully it favors conversations because conversations are two-way. ‘

Once a video call ends, everyone is asked to answer if they want to be called again and they are also given the option to report someone if they have done something inappropriate. That said, the team says it “has no intention” of recording conversations, says Rory Kozoll, the head of the trust and security product. So if someone is reported, the team apparently wouldn’t be able to re-watch the offensive content. Kozoll says the team is “leaning heavily” toward trusting user reports and what they say happened.

“Nothing like that can happen in a phone call that can’t happen in any other phone call,” he says. “So our perspective is that we would treat this in the same way as if you had called the person using another app or on your own phone and reported it to us.”

He declined to give details because it is ‘complicated’ and moderation decisions are made ‘on a case by case basis’.

User reports are already an important feature for Tinder, although this has led to abuse of certain users. Especially trans women their accounts say are wrongly reported and banned by men who target them because they are trans. Similar problems can also arise with video or become even more problematic when it comes to images and not just text. Kozoll said he does not want to speak “too specifically” about how Tinder’s technology will monitor video call behavior, but that the company is “exploring many different technical approaches.”

This also applies to screen recording and screenshots. Morgan says blocking screen recording on iOS is more complicated than on Android, and the team is “testing” it now. She did not say whether people could actually screen an image or screenshot. It seems they can do that now.

Video calling is a huge new product launch for Tinder. It is one of the largest dating apps in the world, so it needs to moderate global conversations in different languages ​​and create the technology that is really needed to make the calls seamless and easy. Said Elie Seidman, the CEO of Tinder The edge last month that the team had investigated video calling before the COVID-19 pandemic, but decided to speed up its launch due to global exclusions and lack of personal data. The success of this feature can be critical to Tinder, especially as countries continue to follow different lockdown stages throughout the year.

Other dating apps already have video calling, including Tinder competitor Bumble. The company launched that feature last year and has seen an increase in the number of people using it since the onset of the pandemic. Tinder can likely catch up while facilitating a whole new part of the dating timeline. Previously, Tinder mainly introduced people to each other, but now it’s the place where they can date to hang out, which the company hopes to boost with features like Swipe Night and in-app trivia.