Gay

Dating apps are adding geolocation sharing features to their platforms, but a new investigation found that it’s possible to identify the exact location of a user with stunning accuracy.

According to a new report from Mashable, a study by Checkpoint Research’s Alexey Bukhteyev found that trilateration can be used to find the precise location of a dating app user. Most dating apps use location filters to match people who are relatively close to each other, but trilateration can find the exact position of a user by measuring distances from multiple points, accurate to within a few meters. This technique can also circumvent privacy protections built into these apps.

Bukhteyev found this particularly worrying on LGBTQ+ dating apps, two of which were used in his investigation, according to Mashable. One of the issues is that in countries that don’t recognize the rights of LGBTQ+ people, local and government officials can locate and target dating app users with trilateration. Recently, officials in the Middle East were targeting people on gay dating apps, asking them to meet for a date, and arresting them when they arrived.

Grindr has hired the two founders of Athena, a fitness community app, to join its team.

According to Axios, the gay dating app company hired Athena co-founder and CEO AJ Wolf as a senior manager of product finance, while co-founder and technology chief Max Roche is joining as a senior iOS engineer.

Axios noted that Grindr did not acquire any of Athena’s assets.

There is not much detail about the hirings, but Grindr has been looking into areas outside of dating to build community on its platform. One area Grindr CEO George Arison has focused on is travel. The company recently released a feature called Teleport to allow users to set their location to a place they plan to travel so they can connect with others before they arrive. Tinder has a similar feature called Passport.

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.

Grindr CEO George Arison is hoping to turn things around for the popular gay dating app after a tumultuous year with employees, investors and app users alike. He is focusing on moving Grindr beyond a hookup app, and in streamlining costs.

According to a feature in The Financial Times, an “a la carte” payment option for travel services will be added to boost the company’s revenue. Arison noted that travelling to events such as Aspen Gay Ski Week and New Year’s Eve in Rio de Janeiro is hugely popular among Grindr users, and the company sees advantages to offering those attending a way to connect.

Grindr is currently testing a feature called Teleport, which lets users place their profile in a new location for an hour to connect with others before traveling to that place. Tinder has a similar feature called Passport, where users can mark their location at a place where they are traveling.

Image: eHarmony

eharmony unveiled a new ad for its dating app in time for dating’s busiest season, but the LGBTQ+-led campaign did not go over well with Christian groups.

The ad features a lesbian couple snuggled up on the couch waiting for their laundry to finish. When the buzzer goes off, one partner gets up to retrieve the laundry while the other lies on the bed, waiting and smiling. Then her partner unloads all the clean laundry on her, and she is elated and taking in the warmth of the clothes fresh out of the dryer. The tagline for the ad is: “Get who gets you.”

According to The Pink News, despite the cute and feel-good premise, right wing Christian activist group One Million Moms has launched a petition to remove the ad from the air, and so far have received over 12,000 signatures. The organization claimed that the ad was airing during “prime time” when children were likely to be watching television and was “crossing a line that eharmony should have never crossed,” according to the petition.

Dating app Grindr has announced a strategic partnership with Ex-human to add an AI assistant to its platform.

According to Decrypt, Ex-human is a bit different from the familiar AI tools we’ve seen, which focus on answering fact-based questions. Instead, Ex-human is designed to engage in “emotionally resonant and meaningful conversations” according to Decrypt.

In fact, the AI model offers virtual companions like imaginary geishas and popular figures like Elon Musk. The companions are designed to show expressions and reactions to different prompts, so the user feels more engaged with the bot.