WASHINGTON — The powerful House Oversight Committee is widening its investigation into the company behind the controversial, now-defunct TeaOnHer gossip app, which let men dish on the women they’ve dated — and has been accused of exposing nude pictures and other sensitive data.
Lawmakers demanded answers Thursday from Utah-based Newville Media Corporation over how it migrated user data from TeaOnHer to Trinity Social, which bills itself as an all-in-one social media platform mirroring Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok — with a co-founder also advertising an “OnlyFans-style feature.”
“You told the Committee that TeaOnHer users post about themselves, but you told TeaOnHer users, before migrating them to Trinity Social, that TeaOnHer had a ‘review model,’ for users to post about other people,” wrote Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), the chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation, to Newville founder Xavier Lampkin.
The Oversight panel began probing TeaOnHer last year in response to reports shortly after the app launched that it exposed the personal data of women who undertook relationships with men on the platform — including government IDs, selfies, and some X-rated images.
Comer and Mace said Thursday they were “concerned the pornographic posts on Trinity Social are similarly non-consensual, and possibly illegal under federal law.”
TeaOnHer, a would-be rival to the Tea app — a popular but controversial dating tool aimed at women — was quickly barred from Apple’s App Store and suffered a breach this past August that exposed data of roughly 86,000 users.
“You then migrated the TeaOnHer userbase to Trinity Social, without providing account holders any options for recusal from the migration,” Comer and Mace told Lampkin Thursday.
TeaOnHer has also been accused of disseminating sensitive content about minors.
The lawmakers claimed, citing screenshots, that TeaOnHer told users that removing posts about juveniles required proof that the requester was a child’s parent or guardian.
Proof sought included birth certificates, custody papers, and government-issued IDs — paperwork that was not required to access the app in the first place.
The committee also found that Trinity Social has no age verification mechanism to “prevent minors from viewing sexually explicit content.”
“Moreover, Trinity Social does not even include a basic warning to users that they may encounter pornographic content, nor does it require users to — at minimum — affirmatively state they are 18 years old or older before accessing the platform,” wrote Comer and Mace.
Last year, the Oversight panel had demanded Newville Media fork over troves of data, including internal communications, and preserve key material about TeaOnHer.
On Thursday, Comer and Mace expressed concerns that by discontinuing TeaOnHer, Newville Media is attempting to cover its tracks.
“In your November response, you stated TeaOnHer’s ‘existing content [is being] preserved for investigation.’ Despite this assertion, you appear to have shut down TeaOnHer.com and the TeaOnHer app,” the lawmakers wrote.
“The Committee is concerned by these actions as they imply you may not be preserving TeaOnHer’s content, which would be misleading the Committee and obstructing our investigation.”
As part of an expanded probe into Newville Media, the Oversight Committee is demanding more communications revolving around TeaOnHer, including correspondence with Lampkin and its legal team.
They also want documentation on the August data breach, communications sent to TeaOnHer users, communications with Apple about availability in the App Store, material on the transition from TeaOnHer to Trinity Social, and details on how data from TeaOnHer is being retained.
Comer and Mace have given Newville a Feb. 26 deadline to answer their requests.
Attempts to contact Lampkin and Newville Media for comment were not immediately successful.
