CONGRESS BEGINS DRAFTING THE INDUSTRY'S FEATURE ROADMAP; INDUSTRY SURPRISED, DISPATCH ISN'T

LAFAYETTE — The Federal Trade Commission tallies romance-scam losses at over a billion dollars in a single recent year. Regulators warn of "pig butchering" — the patient con that begins with pet names and ends with your retirement in a stranger's crypto wallet. And in Washington, the proposed Romance Scam Prevention Act would require dating platforms to notify users who corresponded with accounts later banned for fraud.

Sit with that last one. Congress is now specifying dating app features. When the legislature starts writing your product backlog, your industry has failed a test it was given years to study for.

The Dispatch is not surprised, because the standard architecture is a fraud habitat by design. Anonymous entry. No declared intent. Endless, structureless chat — the exact medium a long con requires to breathe. A scammer doesn't need your money on day one; a scammer needs ambiguity for six weeks, and the incumbent apps supply it as a core feature.

Here is the part the coming regulations will teach the industry the hard way: safety is not a bolt-on. You cannot moderate your way out of an architecture problem. MOOD's answer was built in before launch, not after a subpoena — verification woven into the platform's badge system rather than sold as a premium checkmark; declared intent that collapses the fog a fraud hides in; structured Offers that give a long con nowhere to sprawl; and a jurisdiction-aware policy engine, because Louisiana's own age-verification law arrived this very July and we intend to be the app that was ready before the effective date, not the one issuing apologetic blog posts after it.

The compliance era of dating apps has begun. Some companies will experience it as a crisis. We designed for it as a market.