WASHINGTON — The highly effective Home Oversight Committee is widening its investigation into the corporate behind the controversial, now-defunct TeaOnHer gossip app, which let males dish on the ladies they’ve dated — and has been accused of exposing nude photos and different delicate knowledge.
Lawmakers demanded solutions Thursday from Utah-based Newville Media Company over the way it migrated consumer knowledge from TeaOnHer to Trinity Social, which payments itself as an all-in-one social media platform mirroring Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok — with a co-founder additionally promoting an “OnlyFans-style function.”
“You advised the Committee that TeaOnHer customers publish about themselves, however you advised TeaOnHer customers, earlier than migrating them to Trinity Social, that TeaOnHer had a ‘evaluation mannequin,’ for customers to publish about different individuals,” wrote Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Info Know-how, and Authorities Innovation, to Newville founder Xavier Lampkin.
The Oversight panel started probing TeaOnHer final yr in response to stories shortly after the app launched that it uncovered the private knowledge of girls who undertook relationships with males on the platform — together with authorities IDs, selfies, and a few X-rated pictures.
Comer and Mace stated Thursday they have been “involved the pornographic posts on Trinity Social are equally non-consensual, and presumably unlawful below federal regulation.”
TeaOnHer, a would-be rival to the Tea app — a well-liked however controversial relationship device aimed toward girls — was shortly barred from Apple’s App Retailer and suffered a breach this previous August that uncovered knowledge of roughly 86,000 customers.
“You then migrated the TeaOnHer userbase to Trinity Social, with out offering account holders any choices for recusal from the migration,” Comer and Mace advised Lampkin Thursday.
TeaOnHer has additionally been accused of disseminating delicate content material about minors.
The lawmakers claimed, citing screenshots, that TeaOnHer advised customers that eradicating posts about juveniles required proof that the requester was a baby’s mother or father or guardian.
Proof sought included delivery certificates, custody papers, and government-issued IDs — paperwork that was not required to entry the app within the first place.
The committee additionally discovered that Trinity Social has no age verification mechanism to “forestall minors from viewing sexually express content material.”
“Furthermore, Trinity Social doesn’t even embrace a fundamental warning to customers that they might encounter pornographic content material, nor does it require customers to—at minimal—affirmatively state they’re 18 years previous or older earlier than accessing the platform,” wrote Comer and Mace.
Final yr, the Oversight panel had demanded Newville Media fork over troves of information, together with inner communications, and protect key materials about TeaOnHer.
On Thursday, Comer and Mace expressed issues that by discontinuing TeaOnHer, Newville Media is making an attempt to cowl its tracks.
“In your November response, you acknowledged TeaOnHer’s ‘current content material [is being] preserved for investigation.’ Regardless of this assertion, you seem to have shut down TeaOnHer.com and the TeaOnHer app,” the lawmakers wrote.
“The Committee is anxious by these actions as they indicate you might not be preserving TeaOnHer’s content material, which might be deceptive the Committee and obstructing our investigation.”
As a part of an expanded probe into Newville Media, the Oversight Committee is demanding extra communications revolving round TeaOnHer, together with correspondence with Lampkin and its authorized group.
In addition they need documentation on the August knowledge breach, communications despatched to TeaOnHer customers, communications with Apple about availability within the App Retailer, materials on the transition from TeaOnHer to Trinity Social, and particulars on how knowledge from TeaOnHer is being retained.
Comer and Mace have given Newville a Feb. 26 deadline to reply their requests.
Makes an attempt to contact Lampkin and Newville Media for remark weren’t instantly profitable.
