Tinder users swiping right on pictures of U.S. warplanes placed on the app last week didn't find a potential love match.
Instead, they got a stern warning, most likely from U.S. Central Command, that repeated what the pictures' captions said, in Arabic: "Do not take up arms against the United States and its partners," The Washington Post reported Tuesday.
The ads further said that America will "protect its partners in the face of threats from the Iranian regime and its proxies," and that Central Command is "fully prepared" to use the F-16 and A-10 aircraft it has "currently in the region."
According to a U.S. official familiar with the ad campaign, which Tinder has since removed, the spots belonged to Centcom and are part of a broad psychological operations campaign to deter attacks on U.S. military or allies.
Tinder, a U.S.-based dating app, allows users to swipe right on their screen to approve a potential match and swipe left to reject it. Those swiping right on the pictures of the warplanes were taken to a Central Command post on X, which contained similar warnings, said Séamus Malekafzali, a freelance journalist in Lebanon.
He posted screenshots of the airplane photos on X after finding them on Tinder last week.
Some experts said they saw the warnings through Tinder as extreme and explicit, but it also served as a reminder that U.S. forces had helped down Iranian drones and missiles after Iran launched a mostly thwarted attack on Israel in April.
Central Command declined to comment to The Post about the Tinder posts, as did the Pentagon.
But a defense official said the "Department of Defense does conduct military information operations in support of our national security priorities. These activities must be undertaken in compliance with U.S. law and DOD policy, and we are committed to enforcing those safeguards."
Tinder spokesman Philip Fry confirmed that the ad was removed after The Post asked about it last week, saying it was a violation of company policies on political messaging and violence.
A U.S. military psyops officer, speaking anonymously, said that it was doubtful that the Tinder attempt would be effective.
"What message is it that they think will resonate here?” the officer, who spoke anonymously because he was authorized to give a statement on the ads. "This is just an in-your-face 'don't mess with me.'"
But Gittipong "Eddie" Paruchabutr, a retired Army psyops officer, said such ads could be effective if they were part of a "long-term campaign," but Tinder was probably not the best choice.
"I'm guessing the average belligerent is probably among a very small subset of Tinder users,” Paruchabutr, now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council," added.
He said it would be more effective to identify websites more likely to be used by the target audience of "military-age males" that would intentionally include social media accounts on platforms such as Facebook or Telegram.
But using Tinder was an "unforced error or laziness," he said. "To push back against adversaries in the information space, we need more trained influence professionals and we need to hold their leaders accountable when they mess up."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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