Grindr Drops Ethnicity Filter To ‘Stand In Solidarity’ With ‘Black Lives Matter’
June 3, 2020Grindr has joined the protests against racial inequality by dropping their ethnicity filter, one of their most criticised filters. In their effort to “stand in solidarity” with the Black Lives Matter movement the dating app will no longer allow users to sort through prospective connections by race.
“We will not be silent, and we will not be inactive,” officials wrote on Twitter and Instagram. “We will continue to fight racism on Grindr, both through dialogue with our community and a zero-tolerance policy for racism and hate speech on our platform.”
The app was planning to kickoff Pride Month with different LGBT+ initiatives but as they state, both the coronavirus and the protests happening at this time have brought about “an added responsibility, a shifted tone” for 2020.
“How can we launch a month of celebration when so many of us are hurting? How can we celebrate Pride without acknowledging that we wouldn’t even HAVE a Pride month if it weren’t for the brave black, brown, trans, and queer folks whose uprising against the police at Stonewall gave birth to the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement?” the company’s post continued. “It is our responsibility to speak out against the hate and violence that such a vital part of our community continue to face.”
As ‘Huff Post’ reports, Grindr has been accused of racial profiling and reinforcing stereotypes in the past by allowing it’s users to filter prospective matches by race.
In 2018 Grindr appeared reluctant to revise the ethnicity filter. “While I believe the ethnicity filter does promote racist behavior in the app, other minority groups use the filter because they want to quickly find other members of their minority community,” Grindr’s head of communications, Landen Zumwalt, said in an interview at the time.
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