Looks like Bernie Sanders won't be adopting any "swipe right"-themed campaign slogans any time soon. The popular dating/hookup app Tinder has banned two women who would promote Sanders to men they would match with using the app. Apparently, many thought the women were a "bot" (a fake, spam profile) and reported the accounts for their behavior.
Two women - one from Iowa and the other from New Jersey - confirmed to Reuters on Friday that they received notices from Tinder in the previous 24 hours that their accounts were locked because they had been reported too many times for peppering men on the site with messages promoting Sanders' candidacy.
Robyn Gedrich, 23, said she sent messages to 60 people a day for the past two weeks trying to convince them to support the U.S. senator from Vermont in his race for the Democratic nomination against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"Do you feel the bern?" her message to other Tinder users read, parroting a Sanders campaign slogan. "Please text WORK to 82623 for me. Thanks."
Gedrich, an assistant store manager at retailer Elie Tahari who lives in Brick, New Jersey, said a text would prompt people to start receiving updates from the Sanders campaign, as well as a link where they could sign up and volunteer. She has been unable to sign back into Tinder since logging off on Thursday.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of the matches were less-than-thrilled with the Sanders message, and would reply with "Trump 2016."
While it's probably a violation of Tinder's terms-of-service to campaign for a candidate, this is actually a pretty brilliant idea to target the youth demographic. The overwhelming majority of Tinder's users are under the age of 35, and those people vote at a much lower rate than other generations. While it's unlikely that Tinder outreach would do enough to sway an election, it's still a very innovative way to get young voters involved.
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