A former Catholic priest has brought a lawsuit against Grindr for allegedly selling his personal data without his knowledge or consent. He says the public “outing” cost him his job and his reputation.

In the lawsuit, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill claimed that Grindr failed to inform him that his data was being sold to vendors, thereby allowing people outside of the app to know he was using it and causing him “significant damage,” according to The New York Post.

This follows a class action lawsuit in the U.K. brought by 650 plaintiffs alleging that Grindr shared their data with third parties without their knowledge or consent, including sensitive data like HIV status. The lawsuit also alleges that some of the third parties might have retained some of this data for their own purposes.

Singles are gravitating towards more targeted dating apps and moving away from the one-size-fits-all platforms like Tinder and Bumble.

According to an article in The Financial Times, specialty apps like Grindr (which serves gay and bisexual men) and Feeld (which serves those looking for non-traditional relationships), are seeing downloads and new users increase. Investors are noticing and are looking to these apps rather than the one-size-fits-all dating apps dominating the market.

Tinder and Bumble have seen a decline in downloads and paying users, which has rattled investors. According to the FT, Match Group which owns Tinder has shed about a fifth of its market value since the beginning of 2023, compared to Grindr whose shares have more than doubled in the same time period.

Tinder, Bumble and Hinge have seen surges in downloads and user activity around the Athlete’s Village in Paris as the 2024 Summer Olympics get underway.

According to The Daily Mail, these dating apps have reported thousands of new downloads. Athletes have gravitated to dating apps in the past to hook up during the Olympics, with the exception of an intimacy ban in 2020 due to Covid concerns.

Paris officials have  a different agenda from athletes, providing single beds made of cardboard so that they would be discouraged from having so much sex during the competitions. This has created a lot of buzz on TikTok, with athletes testing out the sturdiness of the beds by jumping on them. (They don’t break or fall apart.)

A vast majority of 79 percent of Gen Z singles said they have experienced dating app burnout, according to a new study by Forbes Health.

The study found that in the last six months, 49 percent of those who reported burnout were using Tinder, followed by Plenty of Fish at 38 percent and Bumble at 29 percent. Raya users had the least amount of burnout reported, at only 3 percent.

“People who experience burnout with dating apps are exhausted from constantly meeting new people, failing opportunities and lies,” Dr. Rufus Spann, a sex therapist and Forbes Health Advisory Board member, said in an article about the study. “Over time, the unfortunate misgivings of being on a dating app can cause someone to lose hope in the dating process and finding the right person.”

Image: Grindr

Grindr has shut off the explore option on its platform for the Olympic Village in Paris to protect the identities of athletes who are staying there to compete.

According to Pink News, the gay dating app has blocked global visibility for the Village area. Social media posts have shown that when you search for people in the Olympic Village, no profiles are offered.

According to Grindr’s announcement about the move, it said: “We're turning off features like "Explore" and "Roam" within the Olympic Village. The ‘show distance’ feature will also be turned off by default, but users can share their approximate distance if they decide to turn it on.”

Gay dating app Grindr crashed in Milwaukee during the Republican National Convention due to a spike in user activity on the platform.

According to Down Detector, over 1,000 users in Milwaukee reported the app being down around 4:00pm on Tuesday, July 16th. When the report came out, ex-Congressman George Santos posted a video on X saying that Grindr executives were calling the RNC convention the “Grindr Superbowl,” though media outlets have yet to confirm this is the case.

The Daily Mail reported that there was also an increase in traffic on the dating app during CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) outside of Washington D.C. last year. There was also an increase of users on its platform during the 2020 Democratic National Convention.