Sex

Dating app Grindr has been sued in the U.K. for allegedly selling the HIV status of its users to third parties.

According to the BBC, the claim was filed in London’s High Court, and alleges that “covert tracking technology” was used to track and illegally share the personal health status of users with advertisers. More than 650 claimants were affected along with reportedly thousands of other U.K. users.

Sharing personal and sensitive data of users with third parties without their consent is illegal in the U.K.

The lawsuit says the information shared with third parties includes the ethnicities and sexual orientations of users. It also says the sharing of such information took place primarily before April 2018, though some data was shared as recently as April 2020. The lawsuit specifically names two companies which help app developers analyze user engagement, Apptimize and Localytics, as involved third parties with access to the data. The lawsuit also claims that these outside firms might have retained some of the sensitive data for their own purposes.

Grindr’s CEO George Arrison is planning to monetize the app more aggressively, including launching an AI chatbot and putting previously free features behind a paywall.

News website Platformer broke the news about Grindr’s plans to launch an AI-based “boyfriend” chatbot feature that can engage in sexually explicit conversations with users, for a price. Some employees have expressed weariness, as the AI-generated conversations could be based in part on private chats between other human users, pending their consent.

Platformer also learned that Grindr is revising its terms of service to ask people signing up if the company can train their AI models on their personal data, which can include direct messages. This is likely to be a privacy issue going forward for other dating apps who could pursue employing user data to train AI.

Tinder has just launched a new online course in partnership with youth platform Yuvaa to educate young daters on consent.

The 90-minute self-learning course entitled “Let’s Talk Consent” will be available for free on the Coursera platform, and is intended to be a resource for young adults in India to learn about interpersonal consent.

According to CNBC, there are five main topics in the course: “understanding consent in personal relationships, setting and enforcing personal boundaries, recognizing signs of healthy and unhealthy relationships via red, green and gray flags, and navigating online and offline interactions with safety and respect.”

Dating platform Feeld debuted an updated app with more features in early December, only to find that users were having trouble logging in or using the app at all.

In a statement posted on its website about the app’s troubled relaunch, Feeld said: “Since our app update on Friday, we’ve been listening to your invaluable feedback, and understand your concerns about some of the changes, technical issues, and our responses. We know that some of you missed out on Feeld dates, Connections and experiences, and we are working on meaningful ways to make this right.”

After almost two weeks of continued problems, the dating app provided another update in mid-December.

Image: Tinder

Tinder has debuted several new graphics and video spots to appeal to Gen Z daters in a new global ad campaign launched this week.

The campaign rolled out in time for “Dating Sunday,” or as some call it, the Superbowl of the dating app industry. The first Sunday of January is the busiest day for dating app traffic and companies like Tinder expect this year to be no different.

According to AdWeek, Tinder has reported the number of messages sent across the app surges by 22 percent on Dating Sunday, and likes increase by 18 percent. Dating app’s busiest season extends from Dating Sunday through Valentine’s Day, when people are making New Year’s resolutions to find love.

Image: Bumble

Dating app Bumble conducted a new study to understand what daters are seeking in 2024 and discovered some interesting results, including that they are more open to dating someone older or younger. Also, a majority of daters are trying to be happy with where they are now instead of constantly trying to improve themselves.

According to Mashable, Bumble found that for 63 percent of respondents, age doesn’t matter, including 59 percent of women who say they are more open to dating younger men. About 35 percent of women say they’ve become less judgmental of age gaps in relationships.

There has also been a trend in recent years, especially among younger daters, to prioritize mental health and take steps to “better” oneself - and expect the same from their dates. A key difference now, according to Mashable, is that a majority of daters – 68 percent - are trying to be happy with who they are now.