NEW YORK TIMES – Mar 5 – Blued, one of the biggest gay dating apps in the world, has succeeded because it plays by the ever-shifting rules for L.G.B.T.Q. China – bringing together a minority community without activism. China is home to an LGBTQ population larger than all of France, ~70M people. But according to a United Nations estimate, less than 5% of gay Chinese choose to come out. Blued has a reported in-country user base of some 24M. Homosexuality was formally considered a mental illness in China until 2001. But in recent years, the government has neither expressed explicit support for the LGBTQ community nor sought to crush it. Whereas Russia has adopted a position "that LGBT rights is a Western conspiracy designed to weaken the nation," says Darius Longarino, a fellow at Yale Law School's Paul Tsai China Center. China's one-child policy further increased pressure on some gay Chinese to stay in the closet and enter heterosexual relationships, because parents pinned all their hopes on one child to provide genetic, legally recognized grandchildren to continue the family line. Blued app launched in 2012. The company, once kept alive by 50-to-500-yuan donations, received its first angel investment of $480K in 2013. It then raised a Series A round investment of $1.6M led by the VC firm Crystal Stream and in 2014 raised an additional $30M from another VC firm, DCM. In the last few years, having monopolized the gay-dating app market in China, Blued has expanded to Mexico, Brazil and India.
Category: Outlets – New York Times
Grindr and OkCupid Spread Personal Details, Study Says
NEW YORK TIMES – Jan 13 – Popular dating services like Grindr, OkCupid and Tinder are spreading user information like dating choices and precise location to advertising and marketing companies in ways that may violate privacy laws, according to a new report released by the Norwegian Consumer Council, a government-funded nonprofit organization in Oslo. Grindr also sent a user's location to multiple companies, which may then share that data with many other businesses, the report said. OkCupid app sent a user's ethnicity and answers to personal profile questions to a firm that helps companies tailor marketing messages to users. OkCupid has recently posted a list of ~300 advertising and analytics "partners" with which it may share users' information. Tinder sent a user's gender and the gender the user was looking to date to two marketing firms. The Norwegian group said it filed complaints asking regulators in Oslo to investigate Grindr and five ad tech companies for possible violations of the European data protection law.
by Natasha Singer & Aaron Krolik
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More Details About Tinder’s SwipeNight Series
NEW YORK TIMES – Sep 20 – Tinder has created a scripted choose-your-own adventure series that it hopes will supply its young users with raw material for conversations. The project, called SwipeNight, consists of four episodes. One will air each week on the Tinder app. In each episode, users will be ushered through an apocalyptic scenario and prompted to make a series of choices. The show features a cast of young diverse actors and, like a video game, gives the user a first-person perspective on the action. Participants will then show up in each other's lists of potential matches. Episodes of SwipeNight will be available on Tinder on Sundays in October from 6PM to midnight in a user's time zone. For now, the show will be available only to Americans. It is reported that SwipeNight production had a budget of ~$5M. A Tinder spokeswoman said that figure was inaccurate, but would not say whether that meant it was low or high.
People Pay for Tinder
NEW YORK TIMES – Aug 6 – Like a mobile game, the dating app offers paid features that increase the odds of success. Lots of people are buying. "Tinder's definitely not a game," said Elie Seidman, the company's CEO. "At the core, it's about human connection." Tinder Gold grants users access to a feature called "Likes You". "The structure of those in-app purchases are highly similar to the structure of in-app purchases for games, in that you have those special abilities," said Randy Nelson, the head of mobile insights at Sensor Tower, an analytics firm. ~70 % of Tinder's revenue comes from subscriptions; the other 30% comes from à la carte features, along with a small amount from ads.
How Facebook Romance Scam Ended up With Tragedy
NEW YORK TIMES – July 30 – Renee Holland befriended a soldier on Facebook and sent him thousands of dollars. She became entwined in a global fraud that Facebook and the US military appear helpless to stop. Many scammers operate from their phones in Nigeria and other African nations, working several victims at the same time. Facebook has become a one-stop shop. It has plenty of photos of American service members. Creating an impostor account can be easy. Facebook groups for single women and widows are full of targets. To her friends and family, Ms. Holland was known as trusting and impulsive. She sent her Facebook friend money for airfare, partly with credit cards, without her husband's knowledge. He never showed up. The Hollands lost $26K to $30K. Mr. Holland was arrested on domestic violence charges in August 2018. On Dec. 23, 2018, he shot and killed Renee and her father at their new home. Mr. Holland then turned the gun on himself. There are no exact figures on how many service members and civilians have been affected. The F.B.I. said it received ~18,500 complaints from victims of romance or similar internet scams last year, with reported losses exceeding $362M, up 71% from 2017. Facebook said it constantly removes impostor accounts.
Facial Recognition Tech Is Growing Stronger
NEW YORK TIMES – July 17 – Dozens of databases of people's faces are being compiled without their knowledge by companies and researchers, with many of the images then being shared around the world. The databases are pulled together with images from social networks, photo websites, dating sites and cameras placed in restaurants and on college quads. While there is no precise count of the data sets, privacy activists have pinpointed repositories that were built by Microsoft, Stanford University and others, with one holding ~10M images. Facebook and Google have most likely amassed the largest face data sets, which they do not distribute, according to research papers. But other companies and universities have widely shared their image troves with researchers, governments and private enterprises. Matt Zeiler, founder and CEO of Clarifai, the A.I. start-up, said his company had built a face database with images from OkCupid. He said Clarifai had access to OkCupid's photos because some of the dating site's founders invested in his company. An OkCupid spokeswoman said Clarifai contacted the company in 2014 "about collaborating to determine if they could build unbiased A.I. and facial recognition technology" and that the dating site "did not enter into any commercial agreement then and have no relationship with them now." She did not address whether Clarifai had gained access to OkCupid's photos without its consent.
Grindr Says It Acted Aggressively in the Case of a Client Who Was Stalked by an Ex
NEW YORK TIMES – July 2 – In Mr. Herrick's case, Grindr worked closely with law enforcement and took extensive steps to delete and ban fraudulent accounts, including investigating hundreds of email addresses, profile names and accounts; conducting voluntary daily searches; and searching account profile content for any potential reference to the physical addresses, phone numbers and other relevant information identified by Mr. Herrick and/or law enforcement.
Queer Dating Apps Are Unsafe by Design
NEW YORK TIMES – June 20 – In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that use of online dating apps among young adults had tripled in three years. The rates are higher among queer people. The frequency with which queer people using social media and mobile dating apps amplifies the privacy concerns we face compared with the general population. 15% of gay and bisexual men who use geosocial dating apps report that someone has shared their intimate images without their consent. Catfishing and revenge porn are common on queer dating platforms. The problem isn't sharing intimate selfies. The problem is the law permits the development of apps that are unsafe by design. Tort law, the regime we use to seek damages from harassers, has been ineffectual because many courts look at gay people sharing selfies and conclude that they gave up their privacy the moment they clicked "send." We've only just introduced a federal revenge porn bill. Communications Decency Act Section 230 immunizes digital platforms from most legal liability associated with the bad behavior of their users.
The Future Is Robots, and They’re Teaching People How to Flirt
NEW YORK TIMES – May 27 – "People think sex and dating is supposed to be easy and innate," said Brianna Rader, the founder and CEO of Juicebox, a sex-education app. "But it's not. It's a life skill just like all other life skills, but unfortunately we're never formally taught these things." Hence the need for Slutbot. The chatbot-based texting service, offered through the Juicebox app, is meant to coach users 18+ in sexting. After confirming that a user is of age, Slutbot starts a conversation, which can be "Slow & Gentle" or "Hot & Sexy." Other apps are less explicitly about sex and romance, but can still be used to cultivate communication in those arenas. Mei, for example, is marketed as a way to improve a user's texting relationship with anyone. Ghostbot, another app, is used to ghost, or quietly dump, aggressive dates on a user's behalf. It is a collaboration between Burner, a temporary phone number app, and Voxable, a company that develops conversational A.I.
Whitney Wolfe Herd’s Work Diary
NEW YORK TIMES – May 9 – Bumble founder's week includes testifying before the Texas Legislature, planning a new headquarters and avoiding a lethally enthusiastic Great Dane. In addition to Bumble, the dating app that requires women to make the first move, Whitney Wolfe Herd, the company's founder and CEO, oversees an app for friends (Bumble BFF), an app for networking (Bumble Bizz), an app for gay men (Chappy), a print magazine (Bumble Mag), an investment fund (Bumble Fund), a film fund (Bumble Presents … The Female Film Force), a psychotherapeutic skin care line (Bumble Beauty), a restaurant concept (Bumble Brew), operations in nine countries, and a slew of celebrity investors and endorsers including Priyanka Chopra and Serena Williams.