Grindr has announced that it will remove its ethnicity filter in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.
The LGBTQ dating app posted the announcement on social media Monday (June 1), indicating that they also made donations to organizations fighting for the cause.
“We will not be silent, and we will not be inactive,” the statement posted to Twitter and Instagram reads. “Today we are making donations to the Marsha P. Johnson Institute and Black Lives Matter and urge you to do the same if you can. 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 has not indicated how much they have donated or when the next release will be issued.
A study from 2015 found that 15 percent of Grindr users explicitly wrote racist preferences or discriminatory rhetoric on their profiles. A similar study published in 2019 found that men of color experiences “significantly more race-based sexual discrimination” which was linked to lower self-esteem and life satisfaction.
The announcement from Grindr comes as Black Lives Matter protests erupt across the country following the murder of George Floyd, an innocent black man who was killed by police in Minnesota. Seventy-five LGBTQ groups have stood in solidarity with the movement and declared anti-racism and an end to white supremacy an integral objective of their groups.
