General News

It’s been a wild month for Sina Weibo. On Friday April 13, the Chinese social media network unveiled plans to delete all posts relating to gay culture as part of a three-month “cleanup” effort. A mere three days later, the company announced it would reverse the ban following an outpouring of anger from users.

Sina Weibo initially described the campaign as a removal of images, videos, text, and cartoons related to pornography, violence, and homosexuality. "This is to further ensure a clear and harmonious society and environment," the network said in its statement, as well as to comply with stricter cybersecurity laws enacted by President Xi Jinping.

But to many users, the announcement had sinister underpinnings. Tens of thousands took to the social network to express outrage at the campaign’s discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in China, an issue that persists more than two decades after the country decriminalized homosexuality.

Halloween has come early for Match.com. The venerable dating site made headlines last week for an outbreak of zombies -- zombie profiles, that is.

A report from The Verge revealed that a glitch has resurrected an unknown number of deleted Match profiles from the dead. In an interview, former Match user Jason Debiak explained his surprise when, over breakfast with his wife and daughter, an email announcing 10 new matches on a decade-old, deactivated account appeared in his inbox.

“I log in, and there I am, from 15 years prior, with less gray hair,” he said. “And my whole profile is there, everything.”

Dating app Bumble is on a mission to help empower women, including partnering with women’s health provider Planned Parenthood to educate college students at the University of Texas, Austin, about consent.

According to experts, the term "consent" as it applies to sexual relationships is often misunderstood, and silence does not imply that your partner wants to be intimate. Consent should instead be “Freely given, Reversible, Informed, Enthusiastic, and Specific” – the FRIES acronym that sex educators use to provide a basic definition of what consent is.

College campuses have come under fire recently for their handling of sexual assault and harassment cases among students. Traditionally, administrators have opted for leniency towards offenders when it’s a he said/ she said scenario (which sexual assault cases often are), allowing the perpetrators to continue attending classes without prosecution, expulsion, or even further investigation. This puts more students, and especially women, at risk.

Are you a bearded man who loves to take his dog for walks in the countryside? Or a woman who loves showing off her tattoos in mirror selfies at the gym?

It’s your lucky day. According to recent research from Badoo, those are some of the sexist qualities singles seek while swiping.

Unfortunately, the news isn’t as good if you’re addicted to group photos and never met a Snapchat filter you didn’t like…

Badoo’s latest survey polled 5,000 users to find out what compels them to swipe left or right. It turns out it takes more than good looks and expert selfie skills to nail the profile pic game, and sometimes it’s the smallest details that make the biggest difference.

Earlier this month Spark Networks (who recently merged with Affinitas GmbH the owners of Elite Singles) announced the global expansion of Jdate (for Jewish singles) and Christian Mingle.

As part of this expansion both of these dating services will be available in more languages. Currently Christian Mingle is available in English, French, German and Spanish. Jdate is available in English, Hebrew and French. As of this month Jdate is now available in German and Spanish as well. In the next few months both of these services will offer local support and languages for both Polish and Russian.

For more information you can read the press release. For more about the dating services you can read our Christian Mingle and Jdate reviews.

It wasn’t long ago that dating services were seen as the last refuge of the lovelorn and desperate. Today online dating hasn’t merely shed its stigma, it’s a bona fide phenomenon and business appears to be booming.

According to a report from IBISWorld, annual revenue in the online dating industry has surpassed $3 billion. Dating services employed over 9,000 people worldwide in 2017 and have collectively seen an annual growth rate of +5.3% over the past five years.

Yet hardly a week goes by without someone publishing an article condemning digital dating for butchering our ability to have real relationships, and even major players like Match Group have fallen short of analysts’ expectations.