Should dating apps filter by race? Not any more, says Grindr, but other apps defend their use, saying they help minorities
- Without ethnic filters, minorities would not find each other, argue those in favour of keeping them; to critics, they let users ‘pay to discriminate’
- The death of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of police in the United States has ignited debate about all forms of racial discrimination
Amid a wave of corporate responses to protests against police brutality, gay dating apps are nixing race-based filters in a bid to fight discrimination on their platforms. But the world’s largest online dating company is defending the controversial filters as a way to empower minorities, setting off a debate about whether the feature should exist at all.
Grindr says it will remove its ethnicity filter in the next release of its software to “stand in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement”. The announcement came a week after George Floyd, a black man, died in the US city of Minneapolis after a police officer knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.
The next day, gay dating app Scruff pledged to remove its ethnic filters to “fight against systemic racism and historic oppression of the Black community”, the company wrote on Twitter. “We commit to continue to make product improvements that address racism and unconscious bias across our apps.”
Dating apps have long allowed users to pay for features to refine matches, including the ability to filter by race. These services, including Grindr, have justified the offering, saying minorities use it to find prospects within their communities.
While Grindr is reversing its position as part of a commitment to fight racism, other apps are not; Match Group defended the continued use of the filter on some of its 40 brands. The world’s largest online dating company has the filter on some platforms, like Hinge, but not others, like Tinder.