Tinder

Swipe right for romance and… revolution? As the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong continue into their third month, and the police response has become violent, demonstrators are growing increasingly creative in their tactics. Tech-savvy activists are now turning to their favorite mobile apps - including Telegram, WhatsApp, Pokemon Go and Tinder - to organize demonstrations and share tips for evading authorities.

Gavin Huang, an editor for the Chinese culture website Goldthread, took to Twitter to share a photo of a Tinder profile he encountered. “So it’s come to this,” he wrote on August 1, “I’m getting protest info on Tinder.” The attached screenshot shows a profile picture with a schedule of protest events and a bio inviting curious swipers to join a strike.

Study on Access to Personal Info by Dating Apps

Image: datingroo

Dating app users often don’t realize how much personal information they are giving away just by signing up. But Datingroo, a U.K.-based online dating research company, has released a new study that shows exactly how little privacy most dating app users have.

Datingroo studied the ten most popular dating apps from Tinder to PlentyofFish to eHarmony, examining 45 personal data access points in 13 categories such as precise location, other accounts on the device, network connections, and modification or deletion of the contents on USB storage, and found some surprising results.

Among all the apps, Badoo and PlentyofFish have access to the most data in user’s devices (92% of all access points studied). Combined, they have more than 522 million users worldwide, which means they have access to an enormous amount of information. Coffee Meets Bagel has the fewest users (7 million), as well as the least data access.

Match Group stock rose considerably after its second quarter earnings report was better than expected, thanks in large part to its star dating app Tinder.

According to Reuters, Match Group revenue for the three months ended June 30 was revealed in a recent earnings call with investors. It rose about 18% to $498 million, about $10 million higher than forecast. The company grew its average subscriber base 40.5% to 5.2 million in the same quarter, more than expected, thanks to its new features and the launch of Tinder Lite. Match now expects to add over 1.6 million average subscribers in 2019, much higher than the 1 million the company had forecast earlier. With all this good news, Match Group stock rose 17 percent.

Tinder Lite provides a version of the app that uses less storage and provides faster service, thanks to a scaled-down version of the famous swiping technology. It launched for Android phones in certain countries in both Southeast Asia and South America, where most people use less expensive Android phones and Internet speed is slower.

App companies are growing frustrated with splitting their increasing revenues with Google Play and the Apple Store, as they continue to pay 30 percent to the tech giants on every transaction made through their app stores. But now, Tinder is offering its customers a direct payment method, a way to bypass Google Play altogether.

The popular dating app is allowing its Android users to enter their credit card information directly into the app rather than using Google Play to buy premium subscriptions like Tinder Gold and Tinder Plus. Once you’ve entered the information, the app automatically defaults to this payment system for all future in-app purchases and renewal fees as well.

According to The Verge, Tinder isn’t the first company to side-step app stores. Epic Games, a popular video game developer, last year released its hit game Fortnite via its own downloadable launcher to avoid giving Google 30 percent of its revenues. Popular music service Spotify has filed an anti-trust complaint against Apple with the European Union for alleged anti-competitive tactics. Apple is now being investigated by the Union for disadvantaging other companies in favor of its own offerings, specifically Apple Music, which competes directly with Spotify. Netflix is also looking at options to avoid the Apple and Google Play stores, especially with Apple now entering the content business.

Image: Tinder

Tinder has announced a new safety feature for those in the LGBTQ community who are traveling abroad.

The new “Traveler Alert” feature allows users to hide their profiles on the app when they feel unsafe traveling in countries and regions that criminalize same-sex acts, according to website Lifehacker. International travelers are subject to the laws of other countries, so it puts LGBTQ folks especially at risk. There are currently 69 countries that persecute same-sex acts, and nine of these allow the death penalty to be imposed, including Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Tinder’s website stated: “It’s important to exercise extra caution if you choose to connect with new people in these countries - as some law enforcement have been known to use dating apps as tools for potential entrapment. Some countries have also recently introduced laws that criminalize communications between individuals on same-sex dating applications or websites and even aggravate penalties if that communication leads to sexual encounters.”

With the proliferation of retouching apps like Facetune and “pretty” filters on Snapchat and Instagram, we have constant access to an idealized image of ourselves. It’s easy to imagine what we might look like with cosmetic tweaks - a little filler here, a little Botox there, resculpt the nose and suction out that stubborn pocket of fat that no amount of diet or exercise can get rid of.

A new study published in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery finds that social media and online dating aren’t just changing how we want to look in the digital realm. They might also have an effect on our openness to changing our appearance in the real world.