Grindr to remove ‘ethnicity filter’ in solidarity with Black Lives Matter movement
The gay dating and hookup app announced the change on Monday, saying: “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.”
“As part of this commitment, and based on your feedback, we have decided to remove the ethnicity filter from our next release.”
Grindr — which describes itself as “the world’s largest social networking app for gay, bi, trans and queer people” — had previously come under fire for allowing users to filter for matches based on ethnicity as part of its paid “Xtra” service.
Currently, users of the technology can filter prospective partners by height, weight, age and ethnicity, though it is not the only dating app to offer these filters.
On Monday, Grindr framed the policy change as one motivated by solidarity with protesters in the United States.
“We stand in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the hundreds of thousands of queer people of color who log in to our app every day.”
