What the EU’s transparency database shows about dating-app bans: how many, how automated, and how rarely anyone appeals

The DSA Transparency Database is the European Commission’s public record of content moderation decisions. Under Article 24(5) of the Digital Services Act, every online platform must send the Commission a copy of each statement of reasons it gives an EU user, without personal data, and the Commission publishes them at transparency.dsa.ec.europa.eu. On 16 September 2026 its home page counted 3,912,174,219 statements from the last 180 days, 373 active platforms, and 43 per cent fully automated decisions. It tells you how a platform moderates. It cannot tell you anything about your own ban, because it was built not to.

Corrected 4 October 2026. An earlier version of this page set Tinder’s full-year 2025 report against the 180-day search, about 280 to one. The like-for-like figure for 2025 is 2.7 per cent, and the sections below now use it.

This page reads the database and the platforms’ own 2025 reports side by side. Every number is from those documents or from the database on the date given, and nothing here needs us; the free check exists for people who would rather answer questions than read.

What a statement of reasons is, and what the database records

Article 17 of the Digital Services Act obliges a hosting service to give the affected user a “clear and specific statement of reasons” when it restricts content or payments, or suspends or terminates the service or the account. Paragraph 3 lists the minimum: the restriction and its duration; the facts, and whether a report or the platform’s own investigation started it; whether automated means were used; the legal or contractual ground, explained; and the redress available, meaning the complaint, the certified bodies and the courts. Paragraph 4 wants it “as precise and specific as reasonably possible”. Paragraph 2 exempts “deceptive high-volume commercial content”.

Article 24(5) sends a copy of every statement to the Commission “without undue delay”, with personal data removed. The database’s documentation gives each record the same fields: the type of restriction, with an account decision recorded as “suspension” or “termination”; a ground of illegal content or incompatibility with the terms; a category from a fixed list; a source; a yes or no for automated detection; and fully, partially or not automated for the decision. The Commission’s questions and answers page keeps a statement in the public search for 180 days, and nowhere says the Commission checks a submission for accuracy. The daily download files are kept for five years: the database’s announcement of 17 February 2025 extended them from 18 months.

What the dating apps have filed

The Fair Ban Index turns these counts into a ranking: the statement gap for every app that reports its 2025 bans, and all 24 apps on eight further measures.

The search page lets you filter by platform and by each field above, and prints a total for the match. These are the last 180 days, read on 16 September 2026.

happn had 905,628 statements in the same window. Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and Badoo filed no account suspensions at all: every account decision is a termination. Grindr does not appear in the platform list under that name, on the search filter or the download page.

Tinder’s entries are almost entirely something other than bans: 1,353,329 of its 1,357,147 are “removal of content”, 1,356,748 sit in “Other violation of provider’s terms and conditions”, and none at all in “Scams and/or fraud”.

What the daily files add, checked 30 September 2026

The search page stops at 180 days. The download page does not: it lists a daily file for every platform, 200 days at a time. We downloaded the newest 50 to 60 daily files for each dating app on the platform list and counted the account decisions in them. The last column comes from the database’s own search, filtered to terminations and then to suspensions.

Five Match Group brands go quiet on the same day. Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Meetic and Plenty of Fish each have their newest account-level filing dated 16 April 2026, and none since. Tinder, OkCupid, Meetic and Plenty of Fish carry on filing content removals, Tinder at about 7,700 a day. Hinge’s daily files are empty from 17 April to 28 September. Bumble and Badoo, both Bumble Inc. apps, carry on filing terminations to 28 September, at very different volumes: 22,848 for Badoo against 2,859 for Bumble in the same 58 days. happn’s 55 files hold no account decision at all. LOVOO is the only dating app in the files that files suspensions rather than terminations, 18,783 of them in 57 days.

The 180-day table above needs that date. Every one of Tinder’s 3,818 terminations and OkCupid’s 1,378 in it is dated on or before 16 April. Hinge’s 4,248 are not six months of decisions: they fall between 19 March and 16 April. We do not know why the filings stop, and the database does not say. It is a reason to read a low termination count as a fact about filing, not about banning. The date each brand stops, and the like-for-like counts, are in five Match Group brands stopped filing account bans.

What it means for you. If a Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, Meetic or Plenty of Fish account was ended after 16 April 2026, you will not find a matching entry in the public database, so reading the crowd you are in cannot help. The statement of reasons the Act requires the platform to send you is a separate duty from the copy it files, and it is still worth asking for: see what your statement must contain.

Bumble and Badoo are the apps whose account-level filings we can still read. We broke Bumble’s down by ground in what Bumble tells the EU it terminates accounts for, and Badoo’s in why was my Badoo account blocked.

Why the database is not a count of bans

Put the database next to the reports and the gap is the finding. Tinder’s 2025 transparency report, published on 28 February 2026 on Match Group’s safety resources page as the file tr_tinder_20250101_20251231.xlsx, records 2,169,598 own-initiative account terminations and 453,181 content removals for the year. Read from the Commission’s aggregated files on 30 September 2026, the database holds 59,187 account-level statements from Tinder dated in 2025, which is 2.7 per cent of that report’s terminations. Hinge’s file counts 633,534 terminations against 112,917 in the database for 2025 (17.8 per cent), and Bumble’s harmonised annex 333,932 against 23,052 (6.9 per cent). The 180-day search is the wrong yardstick for a full-year report, because it holds only the days before each brand’s filings stop. The fuller comparison is in five Match Group brands stopped filing account bans. For Hinge’s grounds, in the report and in the database, see why Hinge bans people.

The Act supplies two lawful explanations. Article 17(2) exempts “deceptive high-volume commercial content” and applies only where the platform holds the user’s contact details, so a bot farm caught at sign-up may get no statement at all. The database does not say which explanation covers which platform. What the reports show is where the bans live: Tinder puts 2,041,438 of its 2,169,598 terminations, 94 per cent, in “Scams and/or fraud”, 2,027,757 of them under the keyword “inauthentic accounts”. Match Group’s group-wide 2025 Safe Dating Report gives 10,024,628 accounts banned or suspended across its EU brands, 6,962,890 of them for “spam, inauthentic, and ineligible accounts”.

Academic audits say the same from the other direction. Kaushal and colleagues, analysing 131 million statements from November 2023 in a 2024 paper, found the free-text facts “seem to be automatically generated and overly short”.

How automated the decisions are

The database has two switches. Tinder marks 1,239,490 of its 1,357,147 statements as detected by automation but only 114,689 as fully automated decisions, with 1,242,458 “not automated”. Hinge’s 4,248 terminations split 2,950 fully automated and 1,298 partially, with no human-only decision at all. Bumble marks 429,019 of 571,878 fully automated, Badoo 951,895 of 1,299,497, OkCupid none.

The annual reports measure the share of measures “solely taken by automated means”. Tinder gives 1,536,656 of 2,622,779, or 59 per cent, noting that it reads the phrase as “decision enacted by automated system”. Inside the scams category it is 1,517,618 of 2,073,707, or 73 per cent; for minors, cyber violence and hate speech Tinder reports zero. Hinge gives 445,488 of 633,534, or 70 per cent, and Bumble’s annex 4,043,040 of 4,813,060, or 84 per cent.

Slow down at the accuracy rows. Tinder states it “is not able to provide a direct measure of accuracy at this time”. Bumble’s 2026 report prints 99.25 per cent, defined as “the percentage of accounts actioned using automated means that are later reversed”, with the caveat that “not all reversals are errors and not all errors are reversed”. By that definition the figure counts people who appealed and won, and cannot see the person who never appealed, which is most people.

How rarely anyone appeals, and what happens when they do

Tinder received 56,991 internal complaints about account decisions in 2025 against 2,169,598 terminations, fewer than three in a hundred, and reversed 12,058 of them, 21 per cent, in a median of 19 hours. Hinge received 86,650 against 633,534 terminations and reversed 31,251, or 36 per cent. OkCupid reversed 1,488 of 3,980. Bumble granted 9,065 of 41,982 appeals in a median of 61 minutes. Badoo granted 9,422 of 127,648. Match Group says its appeals “are reviewed by a dedicated team of human reviewers who are separate from the content moderation team”. The reversals and out-of-court counts for six apps are in do dating app ban appeals work.

The out-of-court route is smaller and slower. Tinder reports 335 disputes at certified bodies in 2025: 73 upheld its decision, 66 reversed it, one partially, 195 have no decision recorded, the median was 1,261 hours, roughly seven weeks, and 62 per cent of outcomes were implemented. Hinge reports 636: 136 upheld, 161 reversed, four partially, 334 without a decision, and 72 per cent implemented. Those percentages are taken over the decisions that went against the platform: 41 of 66 at Tinder, 116 of 161 at Hinge. OkCupid had 25 disputes, Bumble nine, Badoo two, Grindr none. Match Group’s DSA page says of the bodies that “their rulings aren’t binding”, and the numbers agree. The Article 21 guide covers the route itself.

What your statement must contain, and what it means if it never came

Hold your notice against Article 17(3): what was restricted and for how long; the facts, and whether a report triggered them; whether a machine decided; which term you broke and why; and how to complain. A notice that says only “your account was banned for violating our terms” fails most of that list. The Integrity Institute noted on 28 February 2024 that Tinder’s first statements did not “clarify whether automation or humans were used in the enforcement”.

If no statement arrived, three things could be true: the platform treated the account as high-volume commercial content and owed you nothing; it sent the statement to an address you no longer read; or it never sent one. The absence is itself a point for the complaint. What makes the platform show what the decision is anchored to is a GDPR Article 15 access request, one month to answer, sent before any erasure request for the reasons in the access-versus-erasure guide.

Why you cannot look yourself up

Article 24(5) requires the Commission’s copy to be free of personal data. The search box is labelled “Search in the free-text fields”; it takes no names, emails or numbers because none are in there. The platform’s own identifier can be queried only with a platform’s API token, and after 180 days the entry leaves the search. What you can do is read the crowd you are in: filter by platform and week to see the category, ground, automation flags and boilerplate a notice like yours carries. None of it is evidence in your case; it is context for the argument you make in your own.

What this means for one banned person

Read the numbers as a map of where a human read is scarce. If your notice says fake, inauthentic, spam, or nothing at all, you are most likely in the bucket that made up 94 per cent of Tinder’s terminations and was 73 per cent automated. An automated sweep cannot see that you are a real person, and the internal complaint is the first stage a human must handle: Article 20(6) bars complaint decisions taken solely by automated means. That is why the reversal rates, one in five at Tinder and one in three at Hinge, matter more than the accuracy rates.

1. Screenshot the notice, the app screen and the email, with dates.
2. Check the statement against the six items above and note each one missing. That list goes into the complaint.
3. File the internal complaint once, inside six months of the decision, from the banned account’s own login. Say who you are, what the notice omits, and attach the identity document the platform accepts if it is a fake-account ban. The appeal guide has the structure.
4. Send an Article 15 access request in parallel. Access, not erasure.
5. If refused and you live in the EU, go to a certified body. Platform Control in Germany, certified on 4 November 2025 and named for Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid in the Commission’s register, is free to you and takes cases up to a year after the decision; the referee guide covers it. ADR Center in Italy lists Bumble and Badoo, ADR Point in Greece lists Bumble, and both want the internal complaint first. Decisions bind nobody.
6. If the statement never came, tell your Digital Services Coordinator. Match Group’s DSA page points users there.

Our part is the writing and the sending. The Case is $149 and The Advocate $349. The first filing goes within 48 hours of us having everything we need, 24 on The Advocate, and you are copied the moment it does. No outcome is promised by us or by anyone.

What not to do

• Do not make a new account, on a new number or a VPN. Ban evasion is its own line in every report: Bumble terminated 312 accounts for it in 2025 and Badoo 732. A caught reset forfeits the complaint and the certified body. The reset is dying explains why.
• Do not wait. Six months for the complaint, a year for the certified body, 180 days before your statement leaves the public search.
• Do not read a 99 per cent accuracy rate as a verdict on you. It counts reversed appeals, so it excludes everyone who did not appeal.
• Do not send an erasure request first. It removes your side of the file while the moderation record stays.

Questions people actually ask

Does Tinder have to tell me why I was banned?

In the EU, yes. Article 17 of the Digital Services Act requires a statement of reasons for an account termination, naming the term broken, the facts relied on, whether automation decided, and how to complain. The exemption is deceptive high-volume commercial content. Outside the EU there is no equivalent statutory duty, though Tinder’s terms still offer an appeal within six months.

What is a statement of reasons from Tinder?

It is the notice, by email and at login, that sets out the decision and its grounds, and it should cover the six items in Article 17(3). The database shows Tinder now fills the automation field: 114,689 fully automated decisions in the last six months against 1,242,458 not automated.

Can I see my Tinder ban in the DSA database?

No. Article 24(5) strips personal data before the copy reaches the Commission, the search covers free-text fields only, and the platform’s identifier can be queried only with a platform’s API token. Entries leave the search after 180 days.

How many people get banned from Tinder in the EU?

Tinder’s 2025 report, published on 28 February 2026, records 2,169,598 own-initiative account terminations in the EU for the year, 2,041,438 of them in scams and fraud and 51,403 for age rules. Those are measures, not people: Match Group notes one person can be banned on several brands and that some bans are repeat sign-ups.

How do I make a DSA complaint about a Tinder ban?

Three layers. The internal complaint under Article 20, from the banned account, within six months. Then a certified out-of-court body under Article 21, which for Tinder means Platform Control in Germany, free, with a one-year window. Then, if the platform broke the Act itself, for instance by never sending a statement, a complaint to your national Digital Services Coordinator.

Do appeals against dating-app bans ever work?

On the platforms’ own 2025 numbers, one in five at Tinder, one in three at Hinge and OkCupid, one in five at Bumble across all appeals, fewer than one in thirteen at Badoo. Certified bodies reversed 66 of Tinder’s 335 disputes and 161 of Hinge’s 636, and the platforms implemented 62 and 72 per cent of those outcomes. Nobody can promise you a place in those numbers, including us.

Is Grindr in the DSA Transparency Database?

Not under its own name on 16 September 2026: the platform filter and the download page list Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, Badoo, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, happn and Meetic, and no Grindr. Grindr’s own report for February to December 2025 shows 785,111 own-initiative terminations and, on complaints against a decision to suspend or terminate an account, 840,723 filed, 91,795 reversed and 377,674 with no decision recorded. It reports no out-of-court disputes. No certified body names Grindr, so the routes are the internal complaint, the access request and the regulator.

For the Australian side, where Match Group publishes bans and appeal outcomes under a local code rather than the DSA, read what 660,000 Australian bans tell you about your odds. For the EU dispute route, the Article 21 guide takes it further.