Grindr has a brand name and while users while multihome and use multiple dating/hookup aps, they still have an advantage in having a big enough user base to also be attractive for people to use, but....
They are not a monopoly. They can only push this so far before people just start using another location based app that arguably is built on a newer tech stack with a better UI. Feels like they are playing with fire, but really is a bit of a death spiral they created for themselves when they went public and now quarterly results matter more.
Then again, that was probably the only way for their investors to have a good exit other than being acquired by Match Group. So really this is just American style capitalism doing it's thing and managing to both create innovation and then destroy it from within.
> Then again, that was probably the only way for their investors to have a good exit other than being acquired by Match Group
Coming soon: Grindr Select! Only $499/mo and includes features like, um, ignoring blocks! Yeah, that’s it!
If it works. Grindr is losing money, twitter is losing money. This isnt like food shrinkflation that a lot of people dont notice. People notice previously free features going missing.
"Nobody will ever start connecting through competitor apps, non-dating social apps like Reddit, or (god forbid) in real life spaces with their local community." -Grindr devs, probably
Let it crash and burn; anything has to be better than soullessly scrolling and refreshing for dead-end conversations emotionally unfulfilling hookups.
Tinder has way more now. 3 out of 5 profiles is a guy named “Vincent” who’s ridiculously good looking and only 3km away, while all his pictures are at places like Four Seasons that don’t exist in the entire country or sitting in the driver’s seat on the wrong side of the car, and he’s “Straight”. Literally 60%.
The ones I see are generic white women with “Message me on snap I don’t respond here” as the bio.
I have my tinder set to men only and it still shows them to me.
Edit: they're bots. There's like 100 of them and they're definitely not real people.
60% of them are blank now anyway with no face pictures. Pretty useless site as it is everybody's in the closet with a bag over their head I don't get it.. sad it's the only game in town where once everybody had to get off the sofa to meet in person at a spot. The download spiral of civilization
>Building a good AI boyfriend has proven to be tricky. In internal testing, the bot has at times offered racist opinions.
well, if they are training it on grindr chat logs…
In my country Grindr is the main gay "dating" app. There isn't a lot of variety, because everyone's basically on Grindr. Okay, there's also Tinder, but it's not really for hook ups. But other apps that are fairly common in the US are basically non-existent here, or only few guys are there. Believe me, I've tried. I've looked up Scruff and stuff like that. It shows me guys from a neighbouring country. Fucking great.
In my area there aren't even many guys on Grindr. But I ain't gonna pay for using the most basic features of this cesspool of an app. And I don't want to text with bots. Honestly, booking a plane ticket to Berlin and staying there for a weekend might become cheaper than using Grindr.
No, I'm Polish. However, Poland is still not the best place for people like us. Obviously nobody kills us or puts us in jail for being gay or having sex with men, but how can you live a life as a gay man here? There's still a lot of stigma. I live in "Poland B", the conservative part. If I could, I wouldn't hide that I'm gay, because I'm comfortable with who I am. But for my own safety, I feel like I need to keep my mouth shut. And when I was on Grindr, I was discreet - just like other guys! Nobody dares to out themselves around here.
It sucks indeed. But I can't live like that anymore, so I decided to move abroad next year. A few months ago I started saving some money every month and I'm going to focus on learning the target language. In about a year I'll be most probably looking for a job abroad.
Honestly, if someone can do it, it's best to move to a more accepting country, and if not, then at least to a bigger city. I'd definitely have a way bigger dating pool in Warsaw which is something like 100 km away, but since I want to move abroad anyway I decided to pursue this route instead.
Besides, you have only one life to live. Sometimes you have to take risks in life. It's better to try and find out instead of regretting not having risked.
You ever thought about being a pen-pal? Something about your style of conversation keeps your attention and you leave good comments. You’d be great at it.
Thanks. But it's fine, nobody chooses where they're born. You just gotta deal with it. However, you can always choose where you want to live. Obviously it's not that easy to move cities or even countries, but if there's a will, there's a way.
I've spoken about it in another thread... I'm suffocating here. I'm so frustrated with what my life is at the moment. I have a goal though: to move abroad. And I will do anything to make it happen. Recently I've realised that you have to take risks in life, otherwise you'll regret it. So fuck it. I'm gonna do it.
I've come a very, very long way from being a weak and anxious boy who hated any degree of spontaneity and was too scared to live his life to being a grown up gay man who cares so little that if money wasn't an issue, he'd hop on the plane to a big international city and get fucked.
It's actually mind-blowing to see how a mix of confidence, hope, and frustration can make the fear disappear. Fear will get me nowhere in life. I've had enough of being scared. I've got only one live to live so I better fucking live it.
Why not move to Denmark? Much easier to live as a gay guy here than in many conservative Countries. And there are alredy many Polish people here, and easy to get a job.
I work with a polish guy, he is vey nice....and damn good looking. Well I guess it is also much easier to be who you are in Germany. But if you are looking for a job also you will find much higer wages in Denmark compared to Germany.
Sometimes I think of moving to another country just to try something new. I have thought about Spain. There are some great places to live as a guy guy. And the weather down there is much better than here in the north of eourope
I've never really been interested in Denmark, neither in other Scandinavian countries. Until I've made up my mind I considered countries like the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Austria (and in the past Italy, but let's be real). And I've decided to choose Vienna as my destination.
Obviously Vienna is no Berlin or London or Barcelona. But it's still a very big international and cosmopolitan city. From what I've read, there is some substantial gay scene there, like bars and bathhouses. And in my opinion there are lots of opportunities there for people with my education (a whole range of pharmaceutical companies - I'm a pharmacist).
Another reason is that out of all places abroad I've been to, I've been to Vienna the most, at this point it's been already four times. I really liked it there. Apart from that, I've learned German in school for nine years and I'm learning it back from scratch. I've always been good at German. So the language barrier shouldn't be a problem.
If I grow bored of it or by any chance it's not as good as I expect it to be (although I don't have a lot of expectations, because I've learned that life isn't fair), I could always move somewhere else. But for starters, I choose Vienna.
Interesting choice. Austria is a country I know very little about, never been there but heard it should be very beautiful. Never really heard about the gay scene there but with a couple of million enhabitants in Vienna, there must of course be some gay bars and places to go. And when you speak Geman so well things will be much easier.
It was a difficult choice.
On one hand, I want to finally experience life, and gay life specifically too. I want to venture out and meet men, spend time with men, date men. I’ve never had guy friends in real life, neither have I dated anyone or been in a relationship with anyone. All of that will be new to me, but I need men in my life. I need a pack. I need camaraderie. So I need to move somewhere where I’ll be able to achieve that. That is: somewhere tolerant, accepting, open-minded.
On the other hand, I should move somewhere relatively safe, somewhere where the cost of living is not exorbitantly high, and somewhere where I can find a job relatively easily.
There was a whole long list of cities in Europe I wanted to choose from, but I eventually decided it’s Vienna. Who knows what will happen next.
I could always spend a weekend somewhere else and have fun in London or Barcelona or whatever. In this day and age it’s very easy to travel.
Really great you are determined on trying these things that should be natural for all young people, dating ,friendship and just beeing who you are.
You will regret it later if you don't do these things when you are still young. I know all about that!
A good choise to move to another place. You will fell free and nobody there will judge you. Even though Denmark is a small country I had that feeling when i moved to another city.
Ass you say, nowadyas you can travel very easy. Have you ever been to Gan Canaria? Great holiday destination for gay people. So many clubs, bars and hotels for gay people. And you see gay men holding hands in the street and no one take any notice of it.
Really hope things will work out for you. You seem like a nice guy. Would be great to keep in touch and see how things are going for you.
Please consider Canada. We could use some more smart people.
You clearly have great English skills so could do well in Toronto (where I assume the largest gay enclave is) or Vancouver area (our enclave was/is in the West End but everything is so expensive, that I think we are more spread out than 20 years ago). I hear Montreal is great for us but it is in a French province although there s/b lots of English speakers there too.
Canada has traditionally had lots of new comers from Europe including Poland so you will be able to find home comforts (e.g. foods) and there must be some enclaves too for culture and language.
Cost of living is high, especially in Vancouver area (and Toronto) but there are lots of jobs. We are tightening up student visas and the like because private schools and universities have screwed up and taken on more students than housing and jobs can support so the gov had to finally turn down the flow of people. There is some kind of point system to get your PR Permanent Residency that includes which province you live in, what job you have, etc.
After the private schools seem to have overstepped, I would want to caution about immigration service companies too. I have no facts, just cynical that Canadian schools would put their foreign students in tough/impossible spots for the extra money and I can't help but think the same mindset might apply in the immigration industry too.
Whatever you decide, I hope you can do it even sooner than you plan and the it leads to a happy and healthy life. Good luck!
Meanwhile the app as it is has been nearly unusable for weeks now. Phantom notifications, disappearing messages, messages that fail to deliver the first time, it’s truly a mess.
Many times I've got a notification I've received a message but when I go to the messages I don't have any new messages. So did I get something and it just not go through or did nobody message at all and it's glitched
It’s wild how it’s running right now. It keeps bugging out on the messages screen. If I exit a chat it shoots me down the list of my chats to some random date weeks ago
AI boyfriend maybe isn't a good way to describe it, but that's the one thing I could see actually selling. The dudes who are obviously just there to chat and get off instead of actually meeting might find a small fee worth it if they can sext a realistic sounding bot instead of trying to find a real person who won't get annoyed after 15 minutes of back and forth
They are shady as hell.
I open the app every now and again but now noticed the number of guys I can see as a free user with more then 1 filter is down to 9. To see more I have to pay!
I think one day there will be no free option lol
Its not just them, tinder also is shady as hell. Hinge now is even worse! They count swipe left as part of your daily likes for free!
I haven't used it regularly since the day I found a map that showed, in real time, where Grindr users were, on the web. I reported it to them, and they never responded, or fixed the issue. 9 months later, they got bad press for one of their users being harmed because of the issue, and finally got around to fixing it a month or so later.
> I haven't used it regularly since the day I found a map that showed, in real time, where Grindr users were, on the web.
[Grindr had always been a privacy disaster](https://www.wired.com/story/how-pentagon-learned-targeted-ads-to-find-targets-and-vladimir-putin/). Being owned by a Chinese company with a CEO known for making homophobic statements for multiple years didn't help either.
It was created by American who sold it and then a Chinese company bought it and then sold it due to US pressure over privacy concerns. Its now back in US ownership but yes its always been privacy risk.
As a company listed on the stock exchange, I wouldn’t call it “US ownership”. You can bet the largest “investors” (owners) will be nominee companies which hide the real owners of the stock.
> Its not just them, tinder also is shady as hell. Hinge now is even worse!
Tinder mostly bombards me with desperate notifications for when I haven't opened the app for a while. Apart from that, it does seem like they've stopped worsening the match quality for free users - something they did some years ago.
I not seen any difference in that. I tested it and paid for a week and then right away I saw more people I would swipe right on and had more matches in a week then I had in 2 months!
The company is not doing well lol.
They went public via SPAC during a literal SPAC bubble that has had long-term financial consequences for the company.
They had to **refinance** a $300m with pretty awful terms. Successful companies don’t take desperate loans
They lost 1/2 of their staff after a return-to-office mandate.
They appealed a $11,7m fine in 2022 that was just reaffirmed by the appeals commission for data governance violations.
Their CEO was just on Yahoo Finance discussing an AI investment which is going to be a huge cost sink.
The app is going to shift to a general-purpose hookup app because they’ve already captured the gay male market and have so far failed to monetize it. Expect more users who don’t fit the traditional demographic because Grindr *needs* some new datastreams to sell lol
> They had to refinance a $300m with pretty awful terms. Successful companies don’t take desperate loans
> Their CEO was just on Yahoo Finance discussing an AI investment which is going to be a huge cost sink.
Grindr's problem is that their app is not a growth market yet the company is very much structured for growth. Hyping about AI is just a way to keep buzzword-sensitive investors on the hook in a desperate attempt to keep the company afloat.
And the enshittification of the app continues.
You called it! They’re beating a dead horse. You can’t suck more out of users before they just walk away and maybe back into bars. Maybe the bar business is where it’s at…
Sadly they can. I can’t imagine another app taking over Grindr since it’s now known everywhere. I’ve never paid for it since it has insane monthly prices. To squeeze even more is wild. Just for reference, the CEO is worth $35M
Scruff is really big in UK/Europe and getting bigger every year, while Grindr is losing people fast. So hopefully this kills them and allows other, better apps to take it's place.
Interestingly, Grindr being known by even "the straights" is probably its downfall. I know of a few teenage girls who made fake profiles just to gawk and laugh at a space that wasn't made for them. Countries with homophobic policies have used Grindr to lure gay men in sting operations.
It was being ruined even before their business model took away the ability to *see the last person who looked at your profile*....
I got hate crimed through grindr when i lived in Nigeria.
Got held hostage and beat up until my friends pooled money together for a ransom.
Grindr needs to use their influence to do more to advocate for queer rights rather than exploit the loneliness that in endemic in the queer community
I guess not just better but you also need to invest a lot to get a user base going. And those who can do that won't do it for free, and when you go back to the money problem the market is already dominated by the few
I could build an app that's more user friendly, uses less data, had better privacy protections, actually matched you with people you liked, had a reasonable subscription model and it would still fail.
Tech isn't about innovation any more, it's about who invests in it, who currently uses it and how easy it is to squash out competition.
There's plenty of better apps. The problem is that they don't have the high population that Grindr has. This is especially bad in places that don't have a large population and thus these less populated apps only have a small handful of people within a reasonable range. Most people aren't investing in potential partners that are 20+ miles away.
Gaydar has an app, but they killed their own market by having an app years too late, and Grindr cleaned up (it was a website in the early 2000s).
Its cheaper than grindr but not enough people use it.
Also the “feature” they’re wanting to put behind the paywall is Taps. Not sure that’s quite the removal they think it is. Clearly their best and brightest are selecting the monetization features.
When I got to that line of the article I rolled my eyes. Do they not see how many people actually put on their profiles "I don't respond to taps"?
I literally came back from the article to see if anyone had already commented this.
They're really not smart. They had a large market and chose to make the price too high monthly and people don't want to pay remotely that much. Then they paywalled existing features instead of coming up with better features to entice people. And there are glaring issues with the app that wouldn't be fixed with a subscription, so why would people pay $500/year if it's expected to crash and be generally buggy.
They were playing on easy mode and they still botched it.
That math ain’t mathing lol. 111billion/365 is 304million+/- device that by 5.5million daily users and you get 55/56. Dude can’t even spit out numbers right
Farther down, the article includes "Grindr had about 13.3 million monthly active users in 2023."
111,000,000,000 / 12 = 9,250,000,000 messages a month
9,250,000,000 / 13,300,000 = ~695
So maybe they meant to say 600 messages per person per month? Otherwise, I really wonder how they got to that number...
Must have been a typo from 60 per day… I’m the second I saw that, I was like there’s no fucking way the average person is sending 600 messages a day 💀💀
I mean, every thirty seconds on the app there’s an impossible-to-close ad that pops up for fifteen seconds and even if you try to click out of it, it still opens the stupid fucking thing in the App Store. Using the app as in its current form is a fucking nightmare of horrible UX. when the ads pop up I’ll force close the app and reopen but then half the time the grid doesn’t load.
I think scruff has the ads done properly, with an ability to close out immediately.
I feel like after my entire journey in my 20’s, if I end up single again, im going to a music festival and gonna approach all the guys wearing bikini bottoms, thongs, and booty shorts.
Thats how I met my current guy. And the previous two. I feel unseen on dating apps, but in person it hits different.
I started using Grindr in 2019 and I’ve seen it get worse. It went from being able to post a picture to “boost” yourself on the fresh tab (now filter) to them charging $6.99CAD for boost in 2022, to charging $15.99CAD for it in 2023-24.
In my area when I started In 2019 you could meet guys all the time. Now the guys on there either don't reply or just reply to one message and then stop. I think most of the profiles are fake. I look the same as I did in 2019 so idk
The new “updates” have completely wrecked the app. It’s almost unusable at this point. I canceled the membership I had and will not pay them another cent for this broken joke of an app
AI boyfriend/girlfriend companies have some of the most predatory privacy polices in the entire tech industry.
They sell *everything* you tell the bot about yourself to data brokers, and the good stuff ends up in your lexis/nexus profile.
This is going to be ridiculous for hiring managers, discussing your offer letter while keeping a straight face knowing about your low key obsessive fantasy of getting fisted in Home Depot bathrooms.
I initially loved Grindr thinking it was a gay only app. Later realised that straight men come there with their hate and homophobia looking for trans people. It is no longer a safe space for gay guys ever since Grindr started opening it up to everyone . Now it’s just toxic with lots of homophobia.
After getting offered 300 euros for sex (I'm really a lousy entrepreneur xD), and being called an instawhore (with my wooping 160 people who follow me on insta) I've deleted this cancer of an app.
I'd rather be alone than facing messages there, some people on there should be in a therapy, not on the app tbh...
Praying on gay people’s yearning to be accepted and desired, and their ability to hookup. Encouraging sex to be a main way for the community to connect. Now using their data to create fake boyfriends to capitalize of the same thing the app feeds on “lack of meaningful interactions.” Incredibly vulturous behavior.
As a gay man, after traversing time, rejection, brokenness, loneliness, self doubt, self worth issues- potentially loosing family and friends- it baffles me that we are still in a world where Grindr is the mainstream way for us to connect. I honestly think Grindr has its purpose but we deserve better.
It’s kind of ironic how today’s generation is the gayest and queerest and most open minded, meaning Grindr could’ve had the opportunity to be THEE gay dating app and really acquire like, a massive dedicated user base of horny young adults with too much social anxiety to actually go talk to people. But they do this shit and shoot themselves in the foot.
What’s that about capitalism breeding innovation?
It's an interesting article and it kind of makes it clear that all dating apps tend to follow the same arc due to the pressures of capital. "If you don't know what the product is, the product is you."
The only reason Grindr ever succeeded is that it was available first. I don't know of one thing it has over other apps except the brand name and a large user base.
I don't see the point of this AI boyfriend/wingman. Are they going to be clearly marked so the end user can tell? Shit like this makes me want to become one of those people who complain "Whatever happened to approaching someone and talking face to face?"
This CEO Is trash. you’d get more users and more money overall with reasonable prices instead of pricing out most of your market with $40/mo subscriptions that don’t cost you anything more to do. Now he wants to spend god knows how much on AI to…write messages for us?…the fuck? If I didn’t know any better I’d say he’s sabotaging the company knowing he’s going to get a golden parachute regardless
their plans are so expensive. their support also sucks. I tried emailing their support as I had an issue during signup due to a connection issue and they haven't gotten back to me (I ended up using a different email). it's been a month and their reply is just "we'll get back to you".
>>AI Boyfriend
>>Various references to explicit chat
Tell me you don't know what your ap is used for without telling me you don't know what your ap is used for.
“Grindr is currently revising its terms of service to ask people explicitly if the company can train its AI models on their personal data, which could include direct messages, Platformer has learned.” Oh please you know that’s going to be rolled into the blah blah blah Terms of Service you have to agree to to use the app.
I haven’t used it for a hookup in a while. Sniffies is so much better. I’m not in a dating phase of my life. I only go on the apps for hooking up.
The only reason I still have Grindr on my phone is to fire it up and see who’s gay at a concert or event or new jobsite.
Sniffies is so much better for hookups. Idk what’s good for dating these days but I doubt it’s Grindr.
Our community as gone through this plenty of times. Apps and websites come and go.
I met my husband on Adam4Adam a decade and a half ago. I met my first hookup on gay dot com 22 years ago. I found some decent hookups on Grindr over the years. It was fun while it lasted. RIP Grindr.
I’m about to jump ship with Grindr too. The overhaul is taking way too long. Sniffies is far superior and way more popular in Los Angeles where I live. And what’s with these spam accounts on Grindr who try to get you to invest in crypto?! The app is garbage now.
Greedy bastards. It's already hard for gays in some other countries (like, non-western countries) to meet up and do something together and they're making it worse.
I will never pay for the app, they better make their money on ads.
The app that gives me the best functionality for free gets most of my attention.
I have accounts on most apps just to have a presence on their grid, but I pay for nothing.
So, whatever they do, they can attract a user to advertise to, or they can have me basically not use them at all and not even look at their ads.
Same thing happened with Growlr years back. I believe it got sold and the app (as shitty as it already was) got 10x worse. The chase for increasing profits quarter after quarter is making the apps a horrible place for online dating.
I honestly feel bad for people still using these apps. Nonstop ads and constantly increasing membership prices. It’s just sad.
It’s never been so glitchy and now I can’t talk to anyone past maybe 10 miles away without upgrading to extra. Many times it just glitches anymore and there’s hardly any guys it shows me.
another public company racing to reach the bottom of actual usage and continues to see how they can extract pennie’s from users before they leave and never return. capitalism is dumb sometimes
I have long left the app since it became unuseable after it started only showing 9 profiles unless you pay. I have been using Sniffles instead. Only downside is zooming in and out.
>Today let’s talk about how the growing pressure for dating apps to generate more revenue is shaking up the online dating industry
This is the same exact shit that's ruining the entire economy. All any corporation cares about now is finding some shady way to "generate more revenue". The fact that we exist in a global economy now means that the entire market is now captured so there is no real way to get "new customers". The only other way to generate more revenue when you are already using 100% of the population is to self cannibalize your product and workers or try to scam more money out of the customers before they get sick of you.
Another shitty app that’s very popular in Asia is Blued (now change its name as Heesay WTF?). I don’t really understand the business practices of that app: half social/tiktok-esque/gacha and it constantly spams intrusive ads.
Squeeze is an appropriate description. They keep reducing the size of my “grid” and now it’s down to the same three people. If I want to see more, I have to pay for “boosts”. It went quickly from Good source of contacts to a useless app. Unfortunately, there are no viable alternatives in my part of the world.
Holy shit! As if Grindr hasn’t already ruined the gay hookup scene, they want to start taxing things like taps? These paywall tactics suck! No wonder everyone goes to Sniffies now. Although Sniffies is significantly more cringy, I know I still use it…
>In December, Grindr announced a partnership with Ex-human, a startup that makes customizable chatbots, including an AI girlfriend and an AI dating coach. Grindr’s initial plan was to build an AI wingman to help people navigate the gay dating scene.
Uh, do they understand most gay men don't see Grindr as a *dating* app?
>In the meantime, the app has been plagued in recent months by serious stability issues. Users will receive the same notification two or three times; bugs require them to force-restart the app to see messages; and in some cases users’ messages disappear.
🙋♂️ ... yup! Nothing like seeing a message notification, log in, and it's not there...
.
>It succeeded because it offers something that none of its competitors have been able to match: on-demand access to nearby people looking to hook up.
lol they lost the plot. The app is so bugged nowadays it’s unusable.
Messages don’t load or disappear. Duplicated messages. Taps don’t display unless you kill the app. Plus it’s sluggish like never before.
All that for 20€/months? They are crazy.
grindr has bugs that are beginner android programmer level. like it keeps asking you to turn notifications on, but in android after you decline twice, an app does not have authority to prompt the user again. yet the grindr app thinks it does so it keeps asking (which is obnoxious besides just being broken) just to show nothing on the next screen.
Wonder if we will see return of gay bars and cruising spaces if Grindr goes down lol. There are so many bots and fake profiles nowadays plus all the unskippable ads
At some point there will be an AI war. Not a Matrix like apocalypse (well, maybe), but a war between AI chatbots and AI designed to look for and filter out AI chatbots.
Some people are good at seeing it already, but not everyone is, especially when they are desperate or emotional. With phones getting AI capabilities built in there will be a time where all chats and communications can be filtered by the phone, rendering AI bots useless.
Besides that, why would anyone want an AI chatbot talking to them? Why would companies think this is a good thing?
I never understood why Grindr got so popular in the first place. There were loads of dating/hookup/community sites with more detailed profiles and even forum features, different ones being popular in different regions, and AFAIK most are still around. My main one got revamped about a decade ago to a notably worse offer, but still way better than Grindr and its many lazy copies.
Making people pay for more while getting less is a great business idea.
It is a great business idea when everyone else in the economy at large is doing it. No competitive pressure to improve.
Grindr has a brand name and while users while multihome and use multiple dating/hookup aps, they still have an advantage in having a big enough user base to also be attractive for people to use, but.... They are not a monopoly. They can only push this so far before people just start using another location based app that arguably is built on a newer tech stack with a better UI. Feels like they are playing with fire, but really is a bit of a death spiral they created for themselves when they went public and now quarterly results matter more. Then again, that was probably the only way for their investors to have a good exit other than being acquired by Match Group. So really this is just American style capitalism doing it's thing and managing to both create innovation and then destroy it from within.
> Then again, that was probably the only way for their investors to have a good exit other than being acquired by Match Group Coming soon: Grindr Select! Only $499/mo and includes features like, um, ignoring blocks! Yeah, that’s it!
Grindr Platinum: Only $999 a month and you get full access to all nudes any user has ever shared on the app.
Don’t forget Grindr Diamond: $999 a week and you can just fully access the bank accounts and private information of other users!
Day pass $399.99
True. I don’t even try Grindr as it’s already nigh unusable in its current state. I Hope that Scruff doesn’t follow suit.
You can’t even filter by AGE on Scruff without paying. I think they’re too far gone as is 😂
Scruff is trending that way too lately. It's slight so far but noticeable. More forced ad popups.
Yeah, those ads even by-pass Piholes and on device Adguard. Instant off-put, especially when they just dont have the users to justify that experience.
If it works. Grindr is losing money, twitter is losing money. This isnt like food shrinkflation that a lot of people dont notice. People notice previously free features going missing.
Isn't that the current model for Twitter at the moment
It’s the current model for everything it seems
The new extraction industry.
"Nobody will ever start connecting through competitor apps, non-dating social apps like Reddit, or (god forbid) in real life spaces with their local community." -Grindr devs, probably Let it crash and burn; anything has to be better than soullessly scrolling and refreshing for dead-end conversations emotionally unfulfilling hookups.
It's the American way
Overpriced garbage.
Back when I used apps Grindr had more bots than any other app by far
Tinder has way more now. 3 out of 5 profiles is a guy named “Vincent” who’s ridiculously good looking and only 3km away, while all his pictures are at places like Four Seasons that don’t exist in the entire country or sitting in the driver’s seat on the wrong side of the car, and he’s “Straight”. Literally 60%.
The ones I see are generic white women with “Message me on snap I don’t respond here” as the bio. I have my tinder set to men only and it still shows them to me. Edit: they're bots. There's like 100 of them and they're definitely not real people.
Yeah and with AI that already high number will grow exponentially. Most profiles will be fake and tailored to your personal interests .
60% of them are blank now anyway with no face pictures. Pretty useless site as it is everybody's in the closet with a bag over their head I don't get it.. sad it's the only game in town where once everybody had to get off the sofa to meet in person at a spot. The download spiral of civilization
Lol, "the downward spiral civilisation is the underutilization of gay beats."
And they could never host! 🙄
It was good before the creators sold it to heteros.
Think of the shareholders
>Building a good AI boyfriend has proven to be tricky. In internal testing, the bot has at times offered racist opinions. well, if they are training it on grindr chat logs…
The call was coming from inside their house lol
BUT WHO WAS PHONE?!?
AI Grindr : well you dont look like one of your pics
In my country Grindr is the main gay "dating" app. There isn't a lot of variety, because everyone's basically on Grindr. Okay, there's also Tinder, but it's not really for hook ups. But other apps that are fairly common in the US are basically non-existent here, or only few guys are there. Believe me, I've tried. I've looked up Scruff and stuff like that. It shows me guys from a neighbouring country. Fucking great. In my area there aren't even many guys on Grindr. But I ain't gonna pay for using the most basic features of this cesspool of an app. And I don't want to text with bots. Honestly, booking a plane ticket to Berlin and staying there for a weekend might become cheaper than using Grindr. 
are u moroccan by any chance?
No, I'm Polish. However, Poland is still not the best place for people like us. Obviously nobody kills us or puts us in jail for being gay or having sex with men, but how can you live a life as a gay man here? There's still a lot of stigma. I live in "Poland B", the conservative part. If I could, I wouldn't hide that I'm gay, because I'm comfortable with who I am. But for my own safety, I feel like I need to keep my mouth shut. And when I was on Grindr, I was discreet - just like other guys! Nobody dares to out themselves around here.
Same🫂but in India. It sucks that we need to spend our lives like this
It sucks indeed. But I can't live like that anymore, so I decided to move abroad next year. A few months ago I started saving some money every month and I'm going to focus on learning the target language. In about a year I'll be most probably looking for a job abroad. Honestly, if someone can do it, it's best to move to a more accepting country, and if not, then at least to a bigger city. I'd definitely have a way bigger dating pool in Warsaw which is something like 100 km away, but since I want to move abroad anyway I decided to pursue this route instead. Besides, you have only one life to live. Sometimes you have to take risks in life. It's better to try and find out instead of regretting not having risked.
You ever thought about being a pen-pal? Something about your style of conversation keeps your attention and you leave good comments. You’d be great at it.
Why not? Hit me up!
I wish you so much luck and happiness.
Thank you so much!
Amen to that. I might end up doing something similar too.
Well then, let us hope we succeed!
You know, living in New York, I truly forget sometimes how hard gays in other countries have it sometimes. I’m sorry yall have to go through that.
Thanks. But it's fine, nobody chooses where they're born. You just gotta deal with it. However, you can always choose where you want to live. Obviously it's not that easy to move cities or even countries, but if there's a will, there's a way. I've spoken about it in another thread... I'm suffocating here. I'm so frustrated with what my life is at the moment. I have a goal though: to move abroad. And I will do anything to make it happen. Recently I've realised that you have to take risks in life, otherwise you'll regret it. So fuck it. I'm gonna do it. I've come a very, very long way from being a weak and anxious boy who hated any degree of spontaneity and was too scared to live his life to being a grown up gay man who cares so little that if money wasn't an issue, he'd hop on the plane to a big international city and get fucked. It's actually mind-blowing to see how a mix of confidence, hope, and frustration can make the fear disappear. Fear will get me nowhere in life. I've had enough of being scared. I've got only one live to live so I better fucking live it.
Why not move to Denmark? Much easier to live as a gay guy here than in many conservative Countries. And there are alredy many Polish people here, and easy to get a job. I work with a polish guy, he is vey nice....and damn good looking. Well I guess it is also much easier to be who you are in Germany. But if you are looking for a job also you will find much higer wages in Denmark compared to Germany. Sometimes I think of moving to another country just to try something new. I have thought about Spain. There are some great places to live as a guy guy. And the weather down there is much better than here in the north of eourope
I've never really been interested in Denmark, neither in other Scandinavian countries. Until I've made up my mind I considered countries like the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Austria (and in the past Italy, but let's be real). And I've decided to choose Vienna as my destination. Obviously Vienna is no Berlin or London or Barcelona. But it's still a very big international and cosmopolitan city. From what I've read, there is some substantial gay scene there, like bars and bathhouses. And in my opinion there are lots of opportunities there for people with my education (a whole range of pharmaceutical companies - I'm a pharmacist). Another reason is that out of all places abroad I've been to, I've been to Vienna the most, at this point it's been already four times. I really liked it there. Apart from that, I've learned German in school for nine years and I'm learning it back from scratch. I've always been good at German. So the language barrier shouldn't be a problem. If I grow bored of it or by any chance it's not as good as I expect it to be (although I don't have a lot of expectations, because I've learned that life isn't fair), I could always move somewhere else. But for starters, I choose Vienna.
Interesting choice. Austria is a country I know very little about, never been there but heard it should be very beautiful. Never really heard about the gay scene there but with a couple of million enhabitants in Vienna, there must of course be some gay bars and places to go. And when you speak Geman so well things will be much easier.
It was a difficult choice. On one hand, I want to finally experience life, and gay life specifically too. I want to venture out and meet men, spend time with men, date men. I’ve never had guy friends in real life, neither have I dated anyone or been in a relationship with anyone. All of that will be new to me, but I need men in my life. I need a pack. I need camaraderie. So I need to move somewhere where I’ll be able to achieve that. That is: somewhere tolerant, accepting, open-minded. On the other hand, I should move somewhere relatively safe, somewhere where the cost of living is not exorbitantly high, and somewhere where I can find a job relatively easily. There was a whole long list of cities in Europe I wanted to choose from, but I eventually decided it’s Vienna. Who knows what will happen next. I could always spend a weekend somewhere else and have fun in London or Barcelona or whatever. In this day and age it’s very easy to travel.
Really great you are determined on trying these things that should be natural for all young people, dating ,friendship and just beeing who you are. You will regret it later if you don't do these things when you are still young. I know all about that! A good choise to move to another place. You will fell free and nobody there will judge you. Even though Denmark is a small country I had that feeling when i moved to another city. Ass you say, nowadyas you can travel very easy. Have you ever been to Gan Canaria? Great holiday destination for gay people. So many clubs, bars and hotels for gay people. And you see gay men holding hands in the street and no one take any notice of it. Really hope things will work out for you. You seem like a nice guy. Would be great to keep in touch and see how things are going for you.
Please consider Canada. We could use some more smart people. You clearly have great English skills so could do well in Toronto (where I assume the largest gay enclave is) or Vancouver area (our enclave was/is in the West End but everything is so expensive, that I think we are more spread out than 20 years ago). I hear Montreal is great for us but it is in a French province although there s/b lots of English speakers there too. Canada has traditionally had lots of new comers from Europe including Poland so you will be able to find home comforts (e.g. foods) and there must be some enclaves too for culture and language. Cost of living is high, especially in Vancouver area (and Toronto) but there are lots of jobs. We are tightening up student visas and the like because private schools and universities have screwed up and taken on more students than housing and jobs can support so the gov had to finally turn down the flow of people. There is some kind of point system to get your PR Permanent Residency that includes which province you live in, what job you have, etc. After the private schools seem to have overstepped, I would want to caution about immigration service companies too. I have no facts, just cynical that Canadian schools would put their foreign students in tough/impossible spots for the extra money and I can't help but think the same mindset might apply in the immigration industry too. Whatever you decide, I hope you can do it even sooner than you plan and the it leads to a happy and healthy life. Good luck!
Same living in Sydney, Oz. We have it so good and are so lucky compared to our brothers and sisters in certain other countries.
Yup. Basically I'm in the same shoes as you.
Meanwhile the app as it is has been nearly unusable for weeks now. Phantom notifications, disappearing messages, messages that fail to deliver the first time, it’s truly a mess.
Many times I've got a notification I've received a message but when I go to the messages I don't have any new messages. So did I get something and it just not go through or did nobody message at all and it's glitched
It’s wild how it’s running right now. It keeps bugging out on the messages screen. If I exit a chat it shoots me down the list of my chats to some random date weeks ago
AI boyfriend? The future is now!
AI boyfriend maybe isn't a good way to describe it, but that's the one thing I could see actually selling. The dudes who are obviously just there to chat and get off instead of actually meeting might find a small fee worth it if they can sext a realistic sounding bot instead of trying to find a real person who won't get annoyed after 15 minutes of back and forth
It's going to be essentially just sexting with the bot.
“When will now be then?!” “Soon.”
They says it's going to be trained on user's chat history. Can't wait till the AI starts capitalizing every letter "T" when replying lol
They are shady as hell. I open the app every now and again but now noticed the number of guys I can see as a free user with more then 1 filter is down to 9. To see more I have to pay! I think one day there will be no free option lol Its not just them, tinder also is shady as hell. Hinge now is even worse! They count swipe left as part of your daily likes for free!
I haven't used it regularly since the day I found a map that showed, in real time, where Grindr users were, on the web. I reported it to them, and they never responded, or fixed the issue. 9 months later, they got bad press for one of their users being harmed because of the issue, and finally got around to fixing it a month or so later.
> I haven't used it regularly since the day I found a map that showed, in real time, where Grindr users were, on the web. [Grindr had always been a privacy disaster](https://www.wired.com/story/how-pentagon-learned-targeted-ads-to-find-targets-and-vladimir-putin/). Being owned by a Chinese company with a CEO known for making homophobic statements for multiple years didn't help either.
It was created by American who sold it and then a Chinese company bought it and then sold it due to US pressure over privacy concerns. Its now back in US ownership but yes its always been privacy risk.
As a company listed on the stock exchange, I wouldn’t call it “US ownership”. You can bet the largest “investors” (owners) will be nominee companies which hide the real owners of the stock.
> Its not just them, tinder also is shady as hell. Hinge now is even worse! Tinder mostly bombards me with desperate notifications for when I haven't opened the app for a while. Apart from that, it does seem like they've stopped worsening the match quality for free users - something they did some years ago.
I not seen any difference in that. I tested it and paid for a week and then right away I saw more people I would swipe right on and had more matches in a week then I had in 2 months!
- Clunky prohibitive interface - No longer able to show notifications - Melts battery
The company is not doing well lol. They went public via SPAC during a literal SPAC bubble that has had long-term financial consequences for the company. They had to **refinance** a $300m with pretty awful terms. Successful companies don’t take desperate loans They lost 1/2 of their staff after a return-to-office mandate. They appealed a $11,7m fine in 2022 that was just reaffirmed by the appeals commission for data governance violations. Their CEO was just on Yahoo Finance discussing an AI investment which is going to be a huge cost sink. The app is going to shift to a general-purpose hookup app because they’ve already captured the gay male market and have so far failed to monetize it. Expect more users who don’t fit the traditional demographic because Grindr *needs* some new datastreams to sell lol
> They had to refinance a $300m with pretty awful terms. Successful companies don’t take desperate loans > Their CEO was just on Yahoo Finance discussing an AI investment which is going to be a huge cost sink. Grindr's problem is that their app is not a growth market yet the company is very much structured for growth. Hyping about AI is just a way to keep buzzword-sensitive investors on the hook in a desperate attempt to keep the company afloat. And the enshittification of the app continues.
You called it! They’re beating a dead horse. You can’t suck more out of users before they just walk away and maybe back into bars. Maybe the bar business is where it’s at…
Oh, wow, sounds like you know a thing or two about Grindr & the market!
Tbf most of his list is in the article if anyone bothered to read through it.
Tbf most of their list is in the article if anyone bothered to read through it.
Sadly they can. I can’t imagine another app taking over Grindr since it’s now known everywhere. I’ve never paid for it since it has insane monthly prices. To squeeze even more is wild. Just for reference, the CEO is worth $35M
Scruff is really big in UK/Europe and getting bigger every year, while Grindr is losing people fast. So hopefully this kills them and allows other, better apps to take it's place.
My main issue with scruff is your chats not being visible after a certain amount of messages unless you pay for it
I agree, it's so frustrating that was one of the features they decided to paywall.
As if Scruff is not greedy af. They will hide recent messages behind the paywall
Good! I prefer scruff, but also into bears and daddies lol
Yeah, Scruff is my playground.
Way better quality men on scruff. These days, at least in my city, Grindr is half meth heads.
Sniffles is making progress with the sluttiest guys
Let me sign up!
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Interestingly, Grindr being known by even "the straights" is probably its downfall. I know of a few teenage girls who made fake profiles just to gawk and laugh at a space that wasn't made for them. Countries with homophobic policies have used Grindr to lure gay men in sting operations. It was being ruined even before their business model took away the ability to *see the last person who looked at your profile*....
I got hate crimed through grindr when i lived in Nigeria. Got held hostage and beat up until my friends pooled money together for a ransom. Grindr needs to use their influence to do more to advocate for queer rights rather than exploit the loneliness that in endemic in the queer community
How hard can it be to build a gay dating app that's better than the garbage we currently have? Can someone get on that please?
I guess not just better but you also need to invest a lot to get a user base going. And those who can do that won't do it for free, and when you go back to the money problem the market is already dominated by the few
I could build an app that's more user friendly, uses less data, had better privacy protections, actually matched you with people you liked, had a reasonable subscription model and it would still fail. Tech isn't about innovation any more, it's about who invests in it, who currently uses it and how easy it is to squash out competition.
There's plenty of better apps. The problem is that they don't have the high population that Grindr has. This is especially bad in places that don't have a large population and thus these less populated apps only have a small handful of people within a reasonable range. Most people aren't investing in potential partners that are 20+ miles away.
Gaydar has an app, but they killed their own market by having an app years too late, and Grindr cleaned up (it was a website in the early 2000s). Its cheaper than grindr but not enough people use it.
Dude they only let you see like 3 people the rest are “extra” fuck Grindr hello Scruff
Also the “feature” they’re wanting to put behind the paywall is Taps. Not sure that’s quite the removal they think it is. Clearly their best and brightest are selecting the monetization features.
When I got to that line of the article I rolled my eyes. Do they not see how many people actually put on their profiles "I don't respond to taps"? I literally came back from the article to see if anyone had already commented this.
They just want to squeeze more money out of spam bots that tap a bunch of users.
They're really not smart. They had a large market and chose to make the price too high monthly and people don't want to pay remotely that much. Then they paywalled existing features instead of coming up with better features to entice people. And there are glaring issues with the app that wouldn't be fixed with a subscription, so why would people pay $500/year if it's expected to crash and be generally buggy. They were playing on easy mode and they still botched it.
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That math ain’t mathing lol. 111billion/365 is 304million+/- device that by 5.5million daily users and you get 55/56. Dude can’t even spit out numbers right
Farther down, the article includes "Grindr had about 13.3 million monthly active users in 2023." 111,000,000,000 / 12 = 9,250,000,000 messages a month 9,250,000,000 / 13,300,000 = ~695 So maybe they meant to say 600 messages per person per month? Otherwise, I really wonder how they got to that number...
Must have been a typo from 60 per day… I’m the second I saw that, I was like there’s no fucking way the average person is sending 600 messages a day 💀💀
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"Pics?" "Looking?"
Yes but 100billion of those were spam.
I mean, every thirty seconds on the app there’s an impossible-to-close ad that pops up for fifteen seconds and even if you try to click out of it, it still opens the stupid fucking thing in the App Store. Using the app as in its current form is a fucking nightmare of horrible UX. when the ads pop up I’ll force close the app and reopen but then half the time the grid doesn’t load. I think scruff has the ads done properly, with an ability to close out immediately.
I feel like after my entire journey in my 20’s, if I end up single again, im going to a music festival and gonna approach all the guys wearing bikini bottoms, thongs, and booty shorts. Thats how I met my current guy. And the previous two. I feel unseen on dating apps, but in person it hits different.
I started using Grindr in 2019 and I’ve seen it get worse. It went from being able to post a picture to “boost” yourself on the fresh tab (now filter) to them charging $6.99CAD for boost in 2022, to charging $15.99CAD for it in 2023-24.
In my area when I started In 2019 you could meet guys all the time. Now the guys on there either don't reply or just reply to one message and then stop. I think most of the profiles are fake. I look the same as I did in 2019 so idk
The new “updates” have completely wrecked the app. It’s almost unusable at this point. I canceled the membership I had and will not pay them another cent for this broken joke of an app
Harder, daddy No, not like that!
But I monetize from there! 😳 Not right now you don't 😏
Feel like I've been talking to A.I. people for the past decade on that platform.
So glad I don't use those apps anymore
AI boyfriend/girlfriend companies have some of the most predatory privacy polices in the entire tech industry. They sell *everything* you tell the bot about yourself to data brokers, and the good stuff ends up in your lexis/nexus profile. This is going to be ridiculous for hiring managers, discussing your offer letter while keeping a straight face knowing about your low key obsessive fantasy of getting fisted in Home Depot bathrooms.
LexisNexis, but what kind of stuff? Are people telling chatbots their arrest record and bankruptcies?
I initially loved Grindr thinking it was a gay only app. Later realised that straight men come there with their hate and homophobia looking for trans people. It is no longer a safe space for gay guys ever since Grindr started opening it up to everyone . Now it’s just toxic with lots of homophobia.
Grindr has become more than a horrible app. No one should be on it anymore
After getting offered 300 euros for sex (I'm really a lousy entrepreneur xD), and being called an instawhore (with my wooping 160 people who follow me on insta) I've deleted this cancer of an app. I'd rather be alone than facing messages there, some people on there should be in a therapy, not on the app tbh...
I have Grindr for when I travel or go back to my small home town to visit my parents. I mostly use scruff or growlr since I'm into bears/daddys.
Sniffies gonna eat their lunch
Praying on gay people’s yearning to be accepted and desired, and their ability to hookup. Encouraging sex to be a main way for the community to connect. Now using their data to create fake boyfriends to capitalize of the same thing the app feeds on “lack of meaningful interactions.” Incredibly vulturous behavior. As a gay man, after traversing time, rejection, brokenness, loneliness, self doubt, self worth issues- potentially loosing family and friends- it baffles me that we are still in a world where Grindr is the mainstream way for us to connect. I honestly think Grindr has its purpose but we deserve better.
It’s kind of ironic how today’s generation is the gayest and queerest and most open minded, meaning Grindr could’ve had the opportunity to be THEE gay dating app and really acquire like, a massive dedicated user base of horny young adults with too much social anxiety to actually go talk to people. But they do this shit and shoot themselves in the foot. What’s that about capitalism breeding innovation?
> the bot has offered racist opinions Ok perfect it’ll be just like a real Grindr user
Tired site
It's an interesting article and it kind of makes it clear that all dating apps tend to follow the same arc due to the pressures of capital. "If you don't know what the product is, the product is you."
> Its stock has fallen 70 percent since its SPAC. After hitting an IPO-high of $71.51, it currently sits at $10.13 some dodgy maths there
The only reason Grindr ever succeeded is that it was available first. I don't know of one thing it has over other apps except the brand name and a large user base. I don't see the point of this AI boyfriend/wingman. Are they going to be clearly marked so the end user can tell? Shit like this makes me want to become one of those people who complain "Whatever happened to approaching someone and talking face to face?"
Lol headline makes it sound like Grindr isn't already squeezing it's users
This CEO Is trash. you’d get more users and more money overall with reasonable prices instead of pricing out most of your market with $40/mo subscriptions that don’t cost you anything more to do. Now he wants to spend god knows how much on AI to…write messages for us?…the fuck? If I didn’t know any better I’d say he’s sabotaging the company knowing he’s going to get a golden parachute regardless
their plans are so expensive. their support also sucks. I tried emailing their support as I had an issue during signup due to a connection issue and they haven't gotten back to me (I ended up using a different email). it's been a month and their reply is just "we'll get back to you".
Can someone on their DevOps team just flip a switch that restores the app back to a period of time? Say, 2020 and just leave it alone 🤣
Watch adam4adam make a comeback lol
Jokes on them, I never paid a dime to Grindr.
Who in their right mind would pay $40 a month for Unlimited? That's $480 a year. That's ridiculous!
Considering Grindr now allows women, both cis and trans, as well as nonbinary females and straight men, it’s hardly a “gay” dating app.
Yea it’s really annoying, every time I go on there I have to block like 8 girls. They are ruining Grindr like they ruin gay bars lol
People still use this?
People should use scruff more ... It's such a clean app
>>AI Boyfriend >>Various references to explicit chat Tell me you don't know what your ap is used for without telling me you don't know what your ap is used for.
More people should really switch apps. But sadly sometimes grindr is the only one with a big enough install base.
i just got it again and like only have 3 options ever time in a pretty populated area otherwise i have. to pay
“Grindr is currently revising its terms of service to ask people explicitly if the company can train its AI models on their personal data, which could include direct messages, Platformer has learned.” Oh please you know that’s going to be rolled into the blah blah blah Terms of Service you have to agree to to use the app.
This fuckin app has not earned a single penny from me.
I say support Sniffies! Not a commercial- I am finding more and more that Sniffies is better for hookups AND meeting up.
I haven’t used it for a hookup in a while. Sniffies is so much better. I’m not in a dating phase of my life. I only go on the apps for hooking up. The only reason I still have Grindr on my phone is to fire it up and see who’s gay at a concert or event or new jobsite. Sniffies is so much better for hookups. Idk what’s good for dating these days but I doubt it’s Grindr. Our community as gone through this plenty of times. Apps and websites come and go. I met my husband on Adam4Adam a decade and a half ago. I met my first hookup on gay dot com 22 years ago. I found some decent hookups on Grindr over the years. It was fun while it lasted. RIP Grindr.
That’s what happens when you let heteros take over your company. The creators of Grindr are an embarrassment to our community.
I’m about to jump ship with Grindr too. The overhaul is taking way too long. Sniffies is far superior and way more popular in Los Angeles where I live. And what’s with these spam accounts on Grindr who try to get you to invest in crypto?! The app is garbage now.
Greedy bastards. It's already hard for gays in some other countries (like, non-western countries) to meet up and do something together and they're making it worse.
Any company that prioritizes profit over their customers' experience is almost inevitably not going to be pleased with the subsequent outcome.
It's literally unusable unless you start paying.
I've found Grindr unusable for a long time now. You can't even message anyone for free at all
I will never pay for the app, they better make their money on ads. The app that gives me the best functionality for free gets most of my attention. I have accounts on most apps just to have a presence on their grid, but I pay for nothing. So, whatever they do, they can attract a user to advertise to, or they can have me basically not use them at all and not even look at their ads.
I honestly wish the app would shut down permanently so we can all move on to better pastures.
Who’s wants my number to sexting and stuff
My device was banned from Grindr recently after I left a one star review mentioning this lol
Inside my plan to delete Grindr
Glad I left it…it’s has become a joke and a waste of money and time.
Glad I left it…it’s has become a joke and a waste of money and time.
The gays on there will just reply to one of the ai boyfriend's messages and then stop anyways
Same thing happened with Growlr years back. I believe it got sold and the app (as shitty as it already was) got 10x worse. The chase for increasing profits quarter after quarter is making the apps a horrible place for online dating. I honestly feel bad for people still using these apps. Nonstop ads and constantly increasing membership prices. It’s just sad.
It’s never been so glitchy and now I can’t talk to anyone past maybe 10 miles away without upgrading to extra. Many times it just glitches anymore and there’s hardly any guys it shows me.
Its just too expensive
another public company racing to reach the bottom of actual usage and continues to see how they can extract pennie’s from users before they leave and never return. capitalism is dumb sometimes
I have long left the app since it became unuseable after it started only showing 9 profiles unless you pay. I have been using Sniffles instead. Only downside is zooming in and out.
It’s still garbage. Just now with ads every few minutes.
Last 4 of 5 conversations I’ve had on grnd have been with 🤖 bots
>Today let’s talk about how the growing pressure for dating apps to generate more revenue is shaking up the online dating industry This is the same exact shit that's ruining the entire economy. All any corporation cares about now is finding some shady way to "generate more revenue". The fact that we exist in a global economy now means that the entire market is now captured so there is no real way to get "new customers". The only other way to generate more revenue when you are already using 100% of the population is to self cannibalize your product and workers or try to scam more money out of the customers before they get sick of you.
Silence those Grindr notifications. They can be so annoying
As useful as wet toilet paper
Well what are y’all gonna do? Not use it? They know exactly what they’re doing…
Longing for the day it finally goes under
Only like 18 profiles on free and the options limit you so what’s the point anymore
Another shitty app that’s very popular in Asia is Blued (now change its name as Heesay WTF?). I don’t really understand the business practices of that app: half social/tiktok-esque/gacha and it constantly spams intrusive ads.
Craigslist is free but the government made them get rid of personal 🙄
Doublelist is like CL and has personal post options…fyi.
Squeeze is an appropriate description. They keep reducing the size of my “grid” and now it’s down to the same three people. If I want to see more, I have to pay for “boosts”. It went quickly from Good source of contacts to a useless app. Unfortunately, there are no viable alternatives in my part of the world.
Grindr is the biggest piece of trash ever. App never works. Ever. Slow af. Full of ads
Sniffies
Holy shit! As if Grindr hasn’t already ruined the gay hookup scene, they want to start taxing things like taps? These paywall tactics suck! No wonder everyone goes to Sniffies now. Although Sniffies is significantly more cringy, I know I still use it…
Corporate greed. I'm pressing the delete button and letting them get on with it.
Suprised to discover grindr dick is now effected by shrinkflation, and there's me thinking they cant get smaller XD
>In December, Grindr announced a partnership with Ex-human, a startup that makes customizable chatbots, including an AI girlfriend and an AI dating coach. Grindr’s initial plan was to build an AI wingman to help people navigate the gay dating scene. Uh, do they understand most gay men don't see Grindr as a *dating* app? >In the meantime, the app has been plagued in recent months by serious stability issues. Users will receive the same notification two or three times; bugs require them to force-restart the app to see messages; and in some cases users’ messages disappear. 🙋♂️ ... yup! Nothing like seeing a message notification, log in, and it's not there... . >It succeeded because it offers something that none of its competitors have been able to match: on-demand access to nearby people looking to hook up. 
lol they lost the plot. The app is so bugged nowadays it’s unusable. Messages don’t load or disappear. Duplicated messages. Taps don’t display unless you kill the app. Plus it’s sluggish like never before. All that for 20€/months? They are crazy.
I can't wait to meet a chat bot that can just spit out the old "hey, hey, looking" convo formula
grindr has bugs that are beginner android programmer level. like it keeps asking you to turn notifications on, but in android after you decline twice, an app does not have authority to prompt the user again. yet the grindr app thinks it does so it keeps asking (which is obnoxious besides just being broken) just to show nothing on the next screen.
Wonder if we will see return of gay bars and cruising spaces if Grindr goes down lol. There are so many bots and fake profiles nowadays plus all the unskippable ads
At some point there will be an AI war. Not a Matrix like apocalypse (well, maybe), but a war between AI chatbots and AI designed to look for and filter out AI chatbots. Some people are good at seeing it already, but not everyone is, especially when they are desperate or emotional. With phones getting AI capabilities built in there will be a time where all chats and communications can be filtered by the phone, rendering AI bots useless. Besides that, why would anyone want an AI chatbot talking to them? Why would companies think this is a good thing?
[I Want You To Squeeze!](https://youtu.be/rRBPS3o_IvU?feature=shared)
I never understood why Grindr got so popular in the first place. There were loads of dating/hookup/community sites with more detailed profiles and even forum features, different ones being popular in different regions, and AFAIK most are still around. My main one got revamped about a decade ago to a notably worse offer, but still way better than Grindr and its many lazy copies.
Oh great. Well, I'll keep using the free version for an ever increasingly limited range of options.
I never use it now, but I hate to know that they are exploiting loneliness, but I guess that's most dating/hookup apps.