On March 16, 2023, Paola Sanchez, the founder and administrator of Are We Dating the Same Guy?, a collection of Facebook groups where women share “red flags” about men, received a message from Christianne Burns, then fiancée of Tea CEO and founder Sean Cook.
“We have an app ready to go called ‘Tea - Women’s Dating Community’, that could be a perfect transition for the ‘Are we dating the same guy’ facebook groups since it sounds like those are on their way under… Tea has all the safety measures that Facebook lacked and more to ensure that only women are in the group,” Burns said. “We are looking for a face and founder of the app and because of your experience, we think YOU will be the perfect person! This can be your thing and we are happy to take a step back and let you lead all operations of the product.”
The Tea app, much like the Are We Dating the Same Guy Facebook groups, invites women to join and share red flags about men to help other women avoid them. In order to verify that every person who joined the Tea app was a woman, Tea asked users to upload a picture of their ID or their face. Tea was founded in 2022 but largely flew under the radar until July this year, when it reached the top of the Apple App Store chart, earned glowing coverage in the media, and claimed it had more than 1.6 million users.
Burns’ offer to make Sanchez the “face” of Tea wasn't the first time she had reached out to her, but Sanchez never replied to Burns, despite multiple attempts to recruit her. As it turned out, Tea did not have all the “safety measures” it needed to keep women safe. As 404 Media first reported, Tea users’ images, identifying information, and more than a million private conversations, including some about cheating partners and abortions, were compromised in two separate security breaches in late July. The first of these breaches was immediately abused by a community of misogynists on 4chan to humiliate women whose information was compromised.
A 404 Media investigation now reveals that after Tea failed to recruit Sanchez as the face of the app and adopt the Are We Dating the Same Guy community, Tea shifted tactics to raid those Facebook groups for users. Tea paid influencers to undermine Are We Dating the Same Guy and created competing Facebook groups with nearly identical names. 404 Media also identified a number of seemingly hijacked Facebook accounts that spammed the real Are We Dating The Same Guy groups with links to Tea app.