• Background check firm Garbo has announced that it will be shuttering its consumer-facing business at the end of August.
• This as the company faces increased pressure from government and a lack of will from big tech.
• Garbo will continue its work to fight gender based violence as a non-profit organisation.

Last year Tinder announced that users in the US would be able to request background checks on matches facilitated by Garbo. Now over a year later, the company that ran those background checks is retiring its consumer facing products.

The decision comes after Garbo ended its partnership with Match Group, a partnership that was cemented in 2021. That cement, however, has cracked badly since that partnership was signed.

“Over the last few years, we have faced a lack of support and real initiative from online platforms, continuous harassment and threats by bad actors on these platforms, and the prolific issues across the justice systems including access to proper local, state and federal government records is deteriorating by the day. The ripple effects of these issues have impacted victims and survivors, the organizations serving them, and Garbo,” the service’s chief executive officer Kathryn Kosmides wrote in a blog post.

The CEO lists two major reasons for the shuttering of its consumer facing platform. The first is a lack of will from big tech firms who Kosmides says “care more about the bottom-line than they care about you”.

Match Group, the company that owns Tinder, Hinge, Match, OkCupid and other dating platforms, refutes this statement.

“Match Group has made significant investments to enhance safety across our platforms over the last few years and we will continue to do so. From features like ‘Are you Sure?’ and ‘Does this bother you?’ to background checks, we have created tools and made investments that no other dating apps offer. We are committed to continuously investing and building industry-leading features that give users more information and control over who they choose to connect with on our platforms,” a spokesperson for the conglomerate told Engadget.

The second reason is that background checks are getting more expensive and harder for individuals to do.

“The costs for performing searches are rising, and in some places, are used as a revenue source. There’s also no uniform standards for reporting the information we really need for proper and consistent records. And there’s a disturbing trend of bad actors undermining the criminal justice and public record systems by utilizing loopholes and sealing/expunging their records of gender-based violence and other serious harms while threatening Garbo and other organizations,” Kosmides explains.

In the next few months, Garbo will reportedly refocus its efforts in a bid to empower individuals with new tool to protect themselves against gender-based violence.

The firm will honour credits for its platform that have been issued by other services such as Tinder, up until 31st August 2023. Credits issued by Garbo itself to consumers can be refunded through until 31st October.