It's the digital version of a whisper network. Whisper networks have been around as long as humans. Informal ways for people (often women) to share warnings will always self assemble when formal systems don’t protect them.

That said, you;re right to raise concerns about consent and the ethics of sharing information about people without their knowledge. These systems inherently involve trade-offs. When the risk is violence or death, the cost of a false negative (saying nothing) is obvious. So people naturally lean toward maximizing sensitivity, even if that means lower specificity. That;s not ideal, but it's understandable in a world where formal accountability is inconsistent at best, and finding out after the fact isn't an option.

Their existence reflects a failure elsewhere. If we want to reduce the need for them, the solution isn't to shut them down but to make them obsolete. The solution is building systems and cultural norms where violence and coercion are reliably called out and acted upon.

If that idea feels scary or unfair, that's the emotional context many women are already living in. Understanding that is the first step toward addressing why these networks exist in the first place.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisper_network