Labour activists use Tinder to woo young men into voting for Jeremy Corbyn in desperate General Election tactic
DESPERATE left-wing activists have been using Tinder to woo young men into voting for Jeremy Corbyn, it has emerged.
Labour supporter Yara Rodrigues Fowler created a bot to spam people with messages on the dating app in an effort to influence their vote.
And she invited other activists to volunteer their profiles for use by the bot.
The 24-year-old tweeted: “We've created a Tinder chat bot that targets 18-25 yos in constituencies where the youth vote cd swing it BUT WE NEED PROFILES msg me&share!”
Singles told of receiving identical messages from multiple people they had matched with on the site, urging them to vote Labour.
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Toby Adlitt, 22, said two different women he had matched with two years ago suddenly contacted him out of the blue this morning to ask which way he was voting.
He told Sun Online: “I just had two identical messages come through so I thought it’s got to be a robot.”
The surveyor added: “It’s a bit weird to target blokes who are looking for a date with this kind of thing.”
The bot is not just designed to convince people to vote Labour – it encourages people to vote anyone other than Conservative.
Fowler revealed people were told to vote for other parties – such as the Lib Dems – in constituencies where they had a better chance of defeating the Tory candidate.
In one message, she revealed: “We estimate we've sent 10,000-20,000 notifications to 18-25yos in marginal constituencies so far !!!”
She had also used the same bot to encourage Tinder users to register to vote earlier on in the election campaign.
The 24-year-old activist said: “A couple of people have been disappointed, but more have found it fun.”
She told the : "Some have asked me how they should vote, and one has even asked me to be his proxy.
"Another didn't know whether his constituency was a marginal, so he sent me his postcode and I found out for him."
The Labour supporter says not everyone on Tinder agrees with her politically, adding: "I spoke to one man who said he was a Tory but I think he was just being provocative in a misguided attempt to flirt.”
Fowler said she came up with the idea as Tinder is an app where people pay attention when they get notifications.
Last month the Electoral Commission revealed more than two million people had signed up to vote since the snap election was called.
But they warned that despite this about seven million people across Britain who are eligible to vote were still not registered.
Sun Online has contacted the bot's creator and Tinder for comment.