It's pretty clear that this is a misuse of tinder according to its current usage. In some alternate reality or future world when tinder explicitly condones this, then your point would be valid.
I doubt tinder would consider this because the public benefit doesn't outweigh the annoyance to users. If you want to spread the word, you can use Facebook, which is actually better since people share what they think is important, so it's more tuned to people's actual priorities.
>a misuse of tinder according to its current usage
So is the supposedly ingenious idea you mentioned of assuming the burglar is a Tinder user and swiping through thousands of people (using bandwidth, making themselves a fake profile, etc.) to find the correct one. They offloaded the work of 1 second per thousands of people, rather than hours onto a single or small group of people... for which there was no guarantee of success and no real 'end.'
I think that their idea was pretty ingenious, especially if they are successful in the end.
I doubt tinder would consider this because the public benefit doesn't outweigh the annoyance to users. If you want to spread the word, you can use Facebook, which is actually better since people share what they think is important, so it's more tuned to people's actual priorities.