The safety work should be ours

Every dating app has a safety page. It is usually a list of things you should remember to do, which is a strange way to describe a service. Here is what we took on instead.

The early dates stay non-sexual

That is the rule of this app, not a preference you have to announce and then defend. Everyone who joins agrees to it, which means nobody has to be the first to say it, and nobody can treat it as an opening position to negotiate down.

If someone pushes anyway, that is a thing you can report rather than a thing you have to handle. Write to abuse@peony.social — it reaches a person. Doing it repeatedly costs the account.

You are not browsable

There is no gallery of you for strangers to leaf through, because nobody leafs through anybody. Nobody can search for you, collect you, save your photos for later, or come back next month to see whether you have changed your mind.

You will know who you are meeting in time to recognise them when you meet, and not weeks beforehand.

There is nowhere to be pressured

Peony has no message thread. Most of what makes early dating exhausting — the escalation, the pestering, the photograph nobody asked for — needs an inbox to happen in. So there is not one.

Anything you genuinely need to say before meeting, like running slightly late, you can say. Everything else can wait until you are standing in front of each other.

Somewhere public, and it does not move

First dates happen out in the open, somewhere chosen to be a fair trip for both of you. Once it is set, it is set — nobody can nudge it somewhere quieter, later, or "back to mine", because the app simply does not offer a way to. No awkward refusal required, and nothing to negotiate.

Turning up is checked, not trusted

If someone leaves you standing in the cold, the app knows you were there and they were not. That protects you twice: nobody can pretend you were the one who vanished, and being stood up is not your word against theirs.

A plan is a plan

Both of you put something down when you agree to meet. Turn up and it goes towards the date; disappear and you lose it, and some of it goes to whoever you left waiting. Cancelling is always allowed — life happens — and the earlier you do it, the less it costs. It is remarkable what a small amount of consequence does to a no-show rate.

Who you will be matched with

• Adults only, verified. 18+, checked, no exceptions and no clever ways around it.
• Badges are earned, never bought. You see the ones that matter before you agree to meet.
• People you already know can be kept out, so the app does not cheerfully introduce you to a colleague, an ex, or your sister.

If something goes wrong

Write to abuse@peony.social. It reaches a person, not a queue that closes itself after a week, and you do not need to be a user to use it.

Tell us what happened in your own words. If you can include when and where you were meant to meet, that helps us find the rest ourselves — but write first and worry about the details after. Nothing about how much you can remember changes whether we act.

If you are in immediate danger, call 999. We are not an emergency service and we would rather say so plainly than let a page imply otherwise.

Found a vulnerability? security.txt, or security@peony.social. We would much rather hear from you than from someone else.