Grindr

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.

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.

Hinge and Grindr are two standout dating apps as they continue to grow in a tough market; powerhouses Tinder and Bumble are seeing more users leave their platforms.

In general, dating apps have had a rough couple of years, with the coveted Gen Z market looking to other options besides dating apps to meet singles, including in-person events, running clubs, and social media platforms like LinkedIn.

“Online dating trends have continued to decelerate industry-wide, showing minimal relief from the recent struggles,” wrote Morgan Stanley analysts Nathan Feather and Brian Nowak in their research, according to Quartz.

A majority of dating platforms have signed on to a new dating safety code in Australia, in an effort to crack down on dating app users who violate policies.

According to News.com, dating app users who “harass, threaten, or share unwanted explicit photos” could have their accounts terminated across multiple platforms at the same time, intended to create a safer space overall for online dating. Seventy-five percent of companies operating in Australia have signed on to the new industry standard, including Match Group (which operates Tinder, Hinge and OkCupid among others), Bumble and Grindr.

A recurring problem with dating apps is user safety, specifically surrounding the growing number of users who receive unsolicited images. If a perpetrator is banned from one platform, they can easily move on to other platforms, so the new safety standard is intended to prevent this from happening.