Types (Niche)

Parents in China are taking matters into their own hands with their single adult children and using dating apps to help them find someone to marry.

Parent-facing dating apps are taking off in China, according to Rest of World, which reports on tech trends globally. Many parents are using online matchmaking platforms like Perfect In-Laws, Family-Building Matchmaking, and Parents Matchmaking to set up dates for their grown and unmarried children.

On platforms like these, the parents set up profiles for their children, sometimes without their knowledge or consent, according to Rest of World. When the match is made, it’s the parents who meet and get to know each other first, similar to matchmaking apps used in India.

Millions of people are turning to TikTok to get ideas for what to do on a date or to spice things up with their partner. TikTok’s newest viral dating craze is Alphabet Dating, where a couple goes through the letters of the alphabet to create out-of-the-box date ideas.

Instead of letting things get stale (and doing the same thing over and over), TikTokers are posting their Alphabet Date ideas to help inspire others. For example, if you start with the letter A, you can imagine places to go or things to do that begin with the letter A, like visiting an aquarium or doing an archery session, as website Bustle notes. Then the next week, you look for “B” activities like bowling, bike riding, or playing board games. And so on until you go through the alphabet.

Partners can take turns coming up with ideas each time they plan. The idea is to go through the entire alphabet as inspiration to keep things fresh, new and exciting.

A supermajority of Grindr employees have launched a campaign to form a union, announcing the plan via the Communication Workers of America (CWA) to collectively fight for layoff protections, preserve current benefits, add cost of living pay raises, and strengthen LGBTQ+ rights in the workplace, among other demands.

According to Grindr United’s press release announcing its formation, about 100 eligible members from departments across the company including cloud engineering, customer experience, design, engineering, IT, marketing, privacy, product and quality assurance signed representation cards at Grindr.

Employees are asking Grindr management to recognize their union, but if they refuse, employees will petition the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election, according to The Los Angeles Times. (U.S. Labor law allows companies to negotiate and recognize a union once they have signed up a majority of employees (which Grindr United has), or to hold out for a government-run election.)

A massive leak of 2.3 million dating app records, including personal information from over 260,000 dating app users and 969,571 images and private chats were exposed to the public, according to SC Media.

The data breach included extremely sensitive information, including sexually explicit private photos, recollections of sexual experiences, and details about previous sexual encounters that were tied to dating app user profiles, according to Hack Read, a security news website.

The leak primarily affected users of 419 Dating – Chat & Flirt app, which is based in Hong Kong but has users around the world. Other apps were also compromised, including Meet You – Local Dating App and Speed Dating App for American by MyCircle Network Corp, but these are thought to be linked to the same group of developers as 419 Dating.

The former chief privacy officer at Grindr says the company fired him after he raised concerns about privacy violations on the platform, according to the lawsuit he filed in a state court in Los Angeles.

Ron De Jesus claimed in the lawsuit that the LGBTQ+ company willfully ignored his concerns about its “alarming” privacy practices concerning personal user data, according to Bloomberg Law, including retaining sensitive data like nude photos without the consent or knowledge of the user. The document alleges the company also collected the HIV status of users, even after they deleted their accounts.

"In other words, deleted users' private communications, including naked photos and other highly sensitive content, such as HIV status are not only still stored in Grindr's systems, but also its vendor systems, and potentially retrievable by any employee of Grindr, or its third-party support vendor, through a backdoor to Grindr's application," De Jesus claimed in the lawsuit, according to Business Insider.

The way dating apps are being used is changing, with more people looking for validation, friendship, and online connection rather than dates.

According to a new study by Stanford Medicine, dating apps are now showing similarities to social media platforms: using them for distraction and entertainment as well as searching for love. Among the 1,387 Tinder users (aged 17 to 84) surveyed for the study, half said they weren’t interested in meeting someone from a dating app offline, and nearly two-thirds were already married or described themselves as “in a relationship.”  

Because of the changing motivations, people’s experiences on dating apps vary widely, according to the researchers, and have “a strong influence on their satisfaction with the app,” according to Scope, published by Stanford Medicine.