This is Tea – the hottest new app. A women-only platform launched in 2023 but gained attention in July 2025 when 72,000 personal images were leaked in a data breach. Following the breach, class action complaints have been filed against the app seeking restitution for insufficient protection. In lieu of the recent controversy, the Tea app has become popular among students who have mixed feelings about the social ramifications.
When I first downloaded the app, it felt like I was stepping into a private network of women who have your back. I was fascinated by this cyber world where “red flags” aren’t secrets and the whispering rumors are right in front of you, in a comment chain. The app’s features are designed to make you feel secure by providing sex offender maps, reverse image searches, background and public record checks, and prohibiting in-app screenshots. Many women now feel that these safety features are necessary for their well-being.
Image via ChatGBT Ai Generator
Quotes from Tea users:
“Tea is the only app that doesn’t tell women to ‘be careful’—it actually gives us the tools to be careful.”
In an Apple Store review cited by AP News, a woman claimed she used Tea to vet a man she had been matching with. She wrote that through Tea, she uncovered “over 20 red flags, including serious allegations like assault and recording women without their consent,” and then cut off communication. She said, “I can’t imagine how things could’ve gone had I not known.” AP News.
Where do we draw the line between collective safety and individual rights? Tea tries to shift the power into the hands of women by creating a semi-public “early warning” system for dating, but, in doing so, it blurs the boundaries between accountability and vigilantism.
Social media platforms are becoming the new courtroom. Comment sections are replacing juries, and the judges are algorithms. But unlike a real court, there’s no evidence, no rules, no right to representation, and no process of appeals. The verdict is instant and permanent – reputations are the sentence, not your liberty. Hence, under the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments, the Constitution guarantees that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
My curiosity about Tea snowballed into a legal call to action that I want to challenge. Let’s say that a star athlete at a division one college gets expelled after he was deemed a ‘rapist’ on Tea, when in reality it was posted by a group of girls joking around. Typically, for him to successfully sue for defamation, he would need:
- A false statement of fact was made about him
- The statement was published
- The statement was made without privilege (not protected by law)
- It caused harm to their reputation
- It was made with fault (negligence)
However, ‘Defamation per se’ is a legal clause referring to false statements that are automatically defamatory without needing proof of harm – including allegations of: serious crimes (rape, theft, fraud), or conduct incompatible with one’s profession. And yes, there have been individual defamation suits that mirror this hypothetical.
Defamation suits through social media are fresh in the Courts, meaning there’s not much existing knowledge to lean on. The few successful cases were high-profile lawsuits involving celebrities, where the stakes of posting a defamatory claim are much higher. I think there could be future evidence requiring a class action case to be formed against the Tea app; If plaintiffs can show that the platform itself materially contributed to or systematically enabled defamation. Historically, social media platforms have been granted immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), which is intended to shield them by stating that “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” If you post something false on Facebook, then you could be sued for defamation, not Facebook.
But Section 230 only applies when the platform is neutral. I challenge that Tea is a co-developer of their content. Tea does not merely host speech; it encourages it through intentional marketing strategies. The familiarity and comfort I immediately felt after I downloaded Tea made it clear to me that it was a marketing ploy. Each time I clicked on a guy’s profile, Tea would prompt me with “Do you want to turn on reminders for John?” When I clicked yes, I would receive constant alerts – ‘shhh, there’s hot new tea from user “xyz”‘ – about anyone with the name “John”, as if it was reminding me that there’s gossip I may be missing. Secondly, Tea exploits modern teenage culture to promote feelings of familiarity within the app. The term ‘red flag and green flag’ comes from casual youth slang, often used to joke about people’s unserious flaws. Branding your app as “tea” – another youth slang term for gossip – and categorizing people as ‘red flags or green flags’ is a visible strategic marketing technique for cultural exploitation. The feeling of comfort lowers users’ perception of risk, which effectively entices youth to engage in defamatory behavior without realizing it.
No social media platform has ever been held accountable for defamation, under U.S. law Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, protecting every platform – from YouTube to Facebook. Congress hasn’t revised the clause since 1996 because the law hasn’t caught up with the media. Yet Tea could be the first real test against immunity as a co-author of its users’ speech.
