Grindr did not respond to my multiple requests for comment, but Stafford confirmed in an email that Into reporters will continue to do their jobs “without the influence of other parts of the company - even when reporting on the company itself.” In an interview with the Guardian, chief content officer Zach Stafford said Chen’s comments did not align with the company’s values. Some of the most vocal criticism came from within Grindr’s corporate offices, hinting at internal strife: Into, Grindr’s own web magazine, first broke the story. While Chen immediately sought to distance himself from the comments made on his personal Facebook page, fury ensued across social media, and Grindr’s biggest competitors - Scruff, Hornet and Jack’d - quickly denounced the news. Last week Grindr again got derailed in its attempts to be kinder when news broke that Scott Chen, the app’s straight-identified president, may not fully support marriage equality. “Grindr is trying to change - making videos about how racist expressions of racial preferences can be hurtful. “It was inevitable that a backlash would be produced,” Smith says. Founder Joel Simkhai told the New York Times in 2014 that he never intended to “shift a culture,” even as other gay dating apps such as Hornet made clear in their communities guidelines that such language would not be tolerated. For nearly a decade, Grindr resisted doing anything about it. Of course, Grindr didn’t invent such discriminatory expressions, but the app did enable their spread by allowing users to write virtually whatever they wanted in their profiles. Prejudicial language has flourished on Grindr since its earliest days, with explicit and derogatory declarations such as “no Asians,” “no blacks,” “no fatties,” “no femmes” and “no trannies” commonly appearing in user profiles. The Kindr campaign attempts to stymie the racism, misogyny, ageism and body-shaming that many users endure on the app. They responded this fall to the threat of a class-action lawsuit - one alleging that Grindr has failed to meaningfully address racism on its app - with “Kindr,” an anti-discrimination campaign that skeptical onlookers describe as little more than damage control. This has put Grindr’s public relations team on the defensive.
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Then in the spring, Grindr faced scrutiny after reports indicated that the app had a security issue that could expose users’ precise locations and that the company had shared sensitive data on its users’ HIV status with external software vendors.
Early this year, the Kunlun Group’s buyout of Grindr raised alarm among intelligence experts that the Chinese government might be able to gain access to the Grindr profiles of American users.
Instead, the Los Angeles-based company has received backlash for one blunder after another. Flush with cash from its January acquisition by a Chinese gaming company, Grindr’s executives indicated they were setting their sights on shedding the hookup app reputation and repositioning as a more welcoming platform. “These controversies definitely make it so we use dramatically less,” Smith says.īy all accounts, 2018 should have been a record year for the leading gay dating app, which touts some 27 million users. And after a year of multiple scandals for Grindr - from a data privacy firestorm to the rumblings of a class-action lawsuit - Smith says he’s had enough. But they log in sparingly these days, preferring other apps such as Scruff and Jack’d that seem more welcoming to men of color. They created the account together, intending to connect with other queer people in their small Midwestern city of Appleton, Wis. Smith, who’s 32, shares a profile with his partner. Lately, he’s questioning whether it’s worth keeping Grindr on his own phone.
border to the racial dynamics in BDSM pornography. An assistant professor of ethnic studies at Lawrence University, Smith’s research frequently explores race, gender and sexuality in digital queer spaces - ranging from the experiences of gay dating app users along the southern U.S. Jesús Gregorio Smith spends more time thinking about Grindr, the gay social media app, than most of its 3.8 million daily users.