THE GUARDIAN - June 15 - Apple's announcement last week that it was cracking down on some "hookup apps" sparked widespread confusion and concern that the company planned to remove dating apps - particularly Grindr and Scruff - from its app store. A spokesman from Apple said dating apps such as Grindr and Scruff would not be rejected based on the new guidelines. The guidelines ban "overtly sexual or pornographic material" including "'hookup' apps that may include pornography or be used to facilitate prostitution". The company defines this as "explicit descriptions or displays of sexual organs or activities intended to stimulate erotic rather than aesthetic or emotional feelings". Apple did not name any apps that would be affected.
100 posts categorized "Outlets - The Guardian"
Apple's New Policy Doesn't Mean It's Banning Grindr
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'People Are Looking for Something More Serious', Says Hinge's CEO
THE GUARDIAN - May 21 - Justin McLeod, CEO of Hinge, talks about its massive rise in users, his difficult romantic past, and why people are now ditching their partners and looking for someone new. The pandemic has had a big impact on the dating landscape, he says. People switched to video dating, for a start. It was moving that way anyway, he says, but the "pandemic accelerated it". "There have also been reports of people being in 'quarantine relationships', where it was good enough for the lockdown, but not the person [they were] really looking to be with. And so those relationships are starting to end."
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Is It Worth Paying a Premium to Find Love?
THE GUARDIAN - Apr 25 - Tinder has three levels of subscription, Tinder Plus, Tinder Gold and Tinder Platinum, each with different prices. The monthly fee is also linked to age. Users aged ~30 are being charged £27.49 or £29.49, while those under 30 are being charged £13.99 or £14.49. Tinder Plus seemed more random. Some users over 30 are being charged £19.49, most are being asked to pay £4.99, £8.99 or £9.99. Bumble charges £14.99 a month for Bumble Boost, and £32.99 for Bumble Premium. Coffee Meets Bagel charges £34 a month for its Premium service. Grindr also offers a more expensive package - Unlimited, at £31.99 a month. While most apps allow users to pay for premium services for just a month at a time, Plenty of Fish has a minimum premium subscription of three months for £39.99. The minimum time period to subscribe to eharmony's premium subscription is six months for £99.99. The dating and relationships coach Kate Mansfield argues that the most dateable people will be snapped up before they sign up for a paid-for service. Quality, confident people don't need to pay for matchmaking services. Instead of a paid-for app, she advises working on yourself: "Invest in coaching or therapy to get yourself in the best place possible and then use apps' free version to find love."
by Robert Beck
See full article at The Guardian
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Tinder's Plan for Criminal Record Checks Raises Fears of 'Lifelong Punishment'
THE GUARDIAN - Apr 13 - Match Group recently announced a partnership with a non-profit background check company called Garbo to integrate background checks into its online properties. But critics argue the new integration could mimic notoriously faulty background checks and effectively discriminate against the nearly one-third of the adult working population in the US with criminal records, without necessarily making dating apps safer. The Garbo team has yet to decide how far back in time background checks will search, a source of concern for advocates that argue that using criminal history against people who have served their time is another form of "lifelong punishment". Another core issue with the Match Group's approach lies in the unreliability of background checks.
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93% of OKCupid's UK Users Would Still Go on a Date
THE GUARDIAN - Mar 16 - OKCupid has asked its users if coronavirus affects their dating life. OKCupid was prompted to ask the question after noticing a rise of 262% in the number of mentions of the virus in UK profiles between January and March. 93% of users said that they would carry on seeing people in real life, but the virus has apparently prompted people to spend more time looking for love: OKCupid has had a 7% increase in new conversations over the last five days, the company said. Tinder has started warning users of the risks of meeting in person, with an interstitial screen that pops up advising users to wash their hands.
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Sharon Stone Blocked From Bumble
THE GUARDIAN - Dec 30 - Writing on Twitter, the actor complained to the dating app Bumble that she had been blocked from the service after her account was deemed to be fake. Bumble's editorial director Clare O'Connor replied to Stone, unblocking her account and apologizing for the error.
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Dating App Based on Genetic Matching Not Eugenics, Scientist Says
THE GUARDIAN - Dec 17 - George Church's dating app proposes to match users based on their DNA in an attempt to eliminate genetic diseases. He said that the app would screen out potential partners who are considered to have the "wrong" DNA. Church, a molecular engineer, has dismissed claims the app would create a distinction between acceptable and unacceptable humans. The app, which has not yet been developed, would in theory prevent two people from matching if they had similar genetic mutations that could result in rare, hereditary diseases like Tay-Sachs. Church had previously been part of Jeffrey Epstein's circle of scientists friends. In the interview, Church distanced himself from Epstein, saying "just because he hung out with me briefly, doesn't mean I bought into his malarkey."
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Personal Dating Ads Are Making a Comeback
THE GUARDIAN - Oct 31 - Instead of using apps, more people are finding connections in plain, typewriter-text ads. When Kelly Rakowski first set up an online document asking people to send in submissions for a personal ads page, she was overwhelmed. "It really snowballed. At first I got a couple dozen, then all of a sudden I was getting maybe 500 submissions every two days," says Rakowski. And after ~$50K worth of donations through Kickstarter, Rakowski is making an app. She attributes the attention to people being hungry to find more genuine connections online. Modern-day apps function more like slot machines than matchmakers.
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Has Tinder Lost Its Spark?
THE GUARDIAN - Aug 11 - A new study, published last month in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, found that compulsive use made online dating swipers feel even more lonely. Swipe fatigue has prompted some daters to try an analogue approach. In 2019, the matchmaking industry has thrived. Caroline Brealey, founder of Mutual Attraction, a London-based matchmaking service, says the company has seen a dramatic increase in younger clients. "Tinder doesn't present anything radically new," explains Michael Gratzke, chair of the Love Research Network, based at the University of Hull. "Dating apps mimic the way we make snap decisions about people in real life. When we enter a room, it takes seconds to sort who we see." But there is one thing about it that differs from traditional love: swipe. Tinder is addictive. Helen Fisher, a biological anthropologist, argues that we simply don't know what we're doing. "We shouldn't be thinking of these tools as "dating apps", she says. "They're introducing sites. Fisher's solution? Log off when you've spoken to nine people. More than this and we're cognitively overloaded, she argues, leading to romantic fatigue.
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Brunei Introduces Death by Stoning as Punishment for Gay Sex
THE GUARDIAN - Mar 29 - Brunei is to begin imposing death by stoning as a punishment for gay sex and adultery from next week. Brunei, which has adopted a more conservative form of Islam in recent years, first announced in 2013 its intention to introduce sharia law, the Islamic legal system that imposes strict corporal punishments. It was a directive of the Sultan of Brunei, Hassanal Bolkiah, who is one of the world's richest leaders with a personal wealth of about $20B (£15B) and has held the throne since 1967.
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Why Dating Apps Are Trying To Stop Users Blanking Each Other
THE GUARDIAN - Nov 1 - Bumble and Badoo have announced plans to crack down on ghosting. Bumble has recruited an in-house 'ghosting' expert, Kate Leaver, and Badoo has introduced a series of suggested responses, such as: "Hey, I think you're great, but I don't see us as a match. Take care!" Leaver's role, building on the expertise she developed writing her book The Friendship Cure, is focused on pushing for "a revival of kindness and respect," she says. "People are ghosting everyone all over the place. I think they are too lazy, or too cowardly to have the difficult conversations," Leaver adds. "There has been some extreme psychological damage for people who are living without any explanation as to why they've been ghosted." Google, for instance, recently updated Gmail to introduce a feature called "nudges". The service prompts users to reply to emails that they "might have forgotten to respond to" and to "follow up" on emails they sent that never received a reply. While it can occasionally be useful, the feature is attempting to fight a symptom of information overload by adding more information to the pile. It's not enough to ignore an email. We now have to ignore it twice. Could nudging ghosters in the dating world simply add to the overload of the modern era? After all, as the psychologist Maya Borgueta has written in HuffPost, "ghosting is avoidance and often stems from fear of conflict. Which means that ghosting is about wanting to avoid confrontation, difficult conversations and avoid hurting someone's feelings." If that is the case, Badoo's pushy attempts to restart conversations could have the opposite effect: if you ghost because of a fear of confrontation, then it's not much help when your dating app begins confronting you.
by Alex Hern
See full article at The Guardian
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Unsolicited 'Dick Pics' Shouldn't Be Laughed Off, But Criminalised
THE GUARDIAN - Oct 30 - Random and unsolicited sending of sexual images or videos from men to young women is all too common. In the UK, 41% of women aged 18 to 36 have reportedly received non-consensual sexual images, of whom 23% said they found it distressing and 17% said they felt threatened. Flashing your naked body on the street is indecent exposure – so why should it be excused online? A group of MPs call for crackdown over unsolicited sexual images.
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Racism On Dating Apps
THE GUARDIAN - Sep 29 - Sinakhone Keodara is considering suing Grindr for racial discrimination after he received a three-word response on Grindr: "Asian, ew gross." "Over the years I've had some pretty harrowing experiences," says Keodara. "You run across these profiles that say 'no Asians' or 'I'm not attracted to Asians'. Seeing that all the time is grating; it affects your self-esteem." It's important that dating apps take a stand on intolerant behaviour. Bumble's Louise Troen acknowledges the problem, saying: "The online space is complicated, and people can say things they wouldn't say in a bar because of the potential ramifications." Earlier this month, Grindr announced a "zero-tolerance" policy on racism and discrimination, threatening to ban users who use racist language. The app is also considering the removal of options that allow users to filter potential dates by race.
by Chris Stokel-Walker
See full article at Yahoo Finance
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A Growing Number Of App Gamers Are Falling In Love With A Scripted Robot
THE GUARDIAN - Sep 25 - Mystic Messenger was released two years ago by Cheritz, a South Korean game developer. It has since been downloaded by millions of people worldwide. The game is a mix between a romance novel and Spike Jonze's 2013 movie Her, in which a man develops a relationship with a Siri-like character. The primary aim of Mystic Messenger is to pursue a romantic relationship with one of a number of characters in the game. Users talk to them via a text message. The responses are pre-scripted, but feel dynamic and sincere. The idea of simulating romantic relationships through gaming emerged in the 1980s in Japan. In the past year, there has been a bumper crop of hit dating sims, including Love and Producer, Dream Daddy and Doki Doki Literature Club.
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Deep Photo Analysis Has Become Part Of Online Hook-ups
THE GUARDIAN - July 7 - Scouring photos for a conversation starter has become standard on Tinder, as a woman's viral post about toilet paper proves. Hana Michels, a comedian and writer from LA, who shared a screengrab of her Tinder profile to Twitter, found that a lot of men whom she matched with weren't interested in her at all but in her toilet paper holder. She had been chastised by 23 men in a year for the direction in which her toilet paper was facing. On apps like Tinder, you're expected to start a conversation with very little to go on. As such, mise-en-scene trawling has become an essential way of opening a dialogue. Tinder users admitted to scouring the backdrop for conversational fodder.
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