Grindr’s mission is to connect LGBTQ people with one another and the world. We are committed to making Grindr a place where all members of the LGBTQ community, including the trans community, feel safe and welcome. Working with our users and the community, we will continue to refine and evolve our product so people of all genders and sexualities can find meaningful connections in the world around them.

Over the course of this past year, we have worked with trans experts and advocacy organizations around the world – such as East Africa Trans Health & Advocacy Network and the FTM Vietnam Organization – to expand the options for gender identity terms and pronouns on Grindr. Grindr now provides thoroughly inclusive gender options in all 21 languages in which our app is available, using local terms that are culturally appropriate.

For many years, Grindr offered a customizable text field to enable people of different gender identities to describe themselves. Unfortunately, that feature was used to make jokes and brought transphobia into the app. The changes we are making now enable people to broadly express themselves in a thoughtfully designed manner.

"Finding languages and words (pronouns) that we identify with and use day-to-day on a public platform like a dating app can be immensely reaffirming, especially for people who often face invisibilization. If what is intimate to you is respected, it gives you confidence to put yourself out there and connect with people. Varta Trust fully supports Grindr in its efforts to provide a wider range of gender identity expressions for its users," said Pawan Dhall, Founding Trustee of Varta Trust, another one of our collaborators on this project.

Translating gender across languages and cultures is more difficult than you might think. Here are a few of the key challenges we worked through:

Incongruous pronouns

Many languages use predominantly gender neutral pronouns, so, for example, “he/him/his” and “she/her/hers” don’t easily translate to languages like Swailihi (Yeye/Yeye/yake). Our approach has been to map each term and present options for “masculine”, “feminine”, or “neutral” in those cases, and have those appropriately translated to a pronoun term.

Unclear categories

‍Very few words translate perfectly in general. Some words could either be translations of other concepts, or wholly different concepts in themselves. For example, we worked closely with local groups to understand the femminiello identity – specific to Naples, Italy – and whether it was another word for a trans woman, or whether it was its own category. Ultimately, we determined femminiello is its own category.

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Changing cultural sensitivities

Similarly, we had to make determinations about words that some people consider offensive but other people use. In Indonesia, for example, the term waria has long been used by transfeminine people colloquially but, these days, some trans women scholars have taken issue with the term and moved away from it. In these cases, we deferred to local experts but erred on the side of inclusion, as we know many people attach great importance to these terms as an expression of their sense of self.

Kevin Halim, a trans activist from Indonesia who we partnered with for this project, said: "The evolving terminologies for gender identity used throughout Indonesia reflect the local cultures and the historical struggle for acceptance of non-traditional gender identities. I appreciate Grindr’s efforts to include these varied identities, and hope this initiative helps users better understand and appreciate local context in a deeper way."

We know our current options are not perfect. This will be a living list, changing as identity descriptions evolve. If you think we may have missed a term, there is a link within the app where you can suggest a new term. You can also reach out to [email protected].

We want to make it easier for other products to design for inclusion too. We have put together a toolkit developers can use to make their apps more welcoming and inclusive for the trans community:

• Gender translation whitepaper‍
• Full list of genders we’ve translated

As we look ahead, we welcome the opportunity to continue working with our users, the community, and other partners to foster greater respect and inclusivity within our community and the world. By working together, we hope to ensure people of all genders and sexualities can safely and easily find meaningful connections in the world around them.

We’re excited to announce the launch of Play Safe, a new video series educating users and the broader public about Grindr’s safety policies and practices.

Grindr has a world-class moderation and customer experience team that has made significant investments in user safety on the platform over the past few years. Play Safe is designed to raise awareness of Grindr’s many safety features, and to introduce the Customer Experience team to our users and with people around the world.

The campaign is comprised of quick, fun videos featuring real life members of Grindr’s Customer Experience team alongside RuPaul’s Drag Race icon Kandy Muse, who plays a new hire at Grindr helping to debunk Customer Experience misconceptions, spotlight the work of the Customer Experience team, and make safety issues more approachable and engaging for users.  

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The following safety features are included in the first installment of Play Safe:

• The ability to mute, block, and report bad actors on the app in order to have a safer, better experience. Reports are reviewed 24/7 by a team of human moderators who have been trained on LGBTQ-specific cultural sensitivities and gender-inclusive content moderation.
• Features that allow users to verify each other before meeting up to avoid catfishing, such as audio chatting and video chatting.
• Grindr’s moderation team, which operates with more than 99% accuracy and conducts frequent internal audits to ensure that moderation decisions are as fair and accurate as possible.

Grindr works day-in and day-out to make our app a place where the LGBTQ community can feel safe and supported, because we know that’s not always true of the world at large. Play Safe is the first in a series of videos spotlighting Grindr’s work around user safety and privacy—stay tuned for future episodes.

Ten months ago, we published a blog post outlining our expansion of image rules to include underwear. It was a critical step towards our mission of allowing the Grindr community to express themselves more freely. Today, we are announcing another exciting update to our rules, which includes more butts!

Let’s start with Grindr’s philosophy on image policies. We believe:

• All of our members deserve fair and equal treatment, regardless of gender, body type, or other physical attributes. Anything other than this is discrimination.
• Moderation policies should be clear, easy to understand, and easy to enforce, without much room for interpretation or bias.
• There are many contexts where showing skin is not considered pornographic by the app store policies we’re bound to, even in the context of a dating app.

When creating our rules and guidelines, we concentrated first on ways to remove bias and discrimination from the moderation process as much as possible. We recognize that assessments of how sexual a photo is can be influenced by common gender biases: how much skin someone shows, how much body hair they are expected to have, how the fat on their body is distributed, etc.

In addition to general moderation training, our moderators regularly receive specific training on bias, gender, microaggressions, and discrimination, to help them make as fair and equitable decisions as possible. We also do not take body hair or body type (or, body hair type) into consideration when reviewing photos.

Here are our new guidelines for public profile images

The following is Not Allowed:

• Pornographic images & depictions of sex acts
• Full frontal or graphic nudity

The following is Allowed:

• People of all bodies (all ethnicities, all sizes, all genders, and all identities) expressing their sexuality joyfully
• Underwear photos
• Non-pornographic sexual poses
• Some images of buttocks if they are non-graphic and without an overly sexual context

While we are committed to sex-positivity, and hope that most of our users enjoy the new guidelines, we also know that not everyone is comfortable seeing that extra bit of skin. For those people, we recommend filtering your grid to only show people who have a face photo as their primary image. We hope to have more ways to customize and personalize your experience in the future.

We’ve come a long way with image policies in the last year, and are proud to say that our policies are now more intuitive, inclusive, and less prone to bias. We hope that the vast majority of our users will feel confident in understanding our rules and uploading their photos without fear of the images being rejected. In general, our guidelines are very similar to Instagram and YouTube in terms of what we do and don’t allow.

That said, there will always be images that push the limits of what is clearly allowed, and we do have to draw the line to prohibit what the app stores consider pornography. It’s extremely difficult to accurately define what is and isn’t pornographic. As United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said, “…I know it when I see it.”

We, however, have to define it in a way that is less vague, and so we have set criteria to help our moderators make informed decisions:

• Pose - Is the pose sexually suggestive?
• Context - Is the image in a private, intimate, or sexual setting? Is there more than one person in the image, or props that need to be considered?
• Nudity - Is there a focus on genitals, even if clothed? (Keep in mind that any explicit nudity must be rejected regardless.)

If the image includes sexual content in only one out of the three categories, it is more likely to be acceptable. If it has sexual content in all three, then it should be rejected. If a photo has sexual content in two out of the three categories, it’s an edge case and needs to be evaluated individually, keeping all aspects of the image in mind.

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When determining edge cases or boundary-pushing images, we’ll consider the apparent intent of the image. Of course it’s hard to know exactly what someone hopes to convey when they upload an image to Grindr, but we draw the line between these two scenarios:

• Allowed: Hey, look at me, don’t I look attractive and like you might want to have sex with me some time?
• Not allowed: Hey, I bet this image makes you imagine yourself in this exact scenario with me having sex just like this…

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A note on gender and nudity:

We are working towards gender-inclusive photo rules for our community instead of holding men, women, and nonbinary people to different standards. Unfortunately due to the current app store policies, we must include women’s nipples as a prohibited nudity category in our photo policies. Men and nonbinary people are allowed to show their nipples.

Given the millions of users who use the app every day, we moderate a lot of profile images.  In addition to our (amazing) human moderation team, we do also auto-approve some images that our artificial intelligence system classifies as “definitely not pornography.” This helps our team to focus on those difficult edge cases, and to ensure that any rejected image is done so after careful consideration. That said, both AI and humans can sometimes get things wrong, so you may see images on Grindr that don’t perfectly fit within the rules we’ve outlined above. If that’s the case, we would love for you to let us know by flagging and reporting the profile so our team can take another look.

We hope that explaining the thought process behind our image moderation practices helps you understand what is and isn’t allowed, and why. Our moderation team works hard to help Grindr feel like an inclusive, sex-positive, and fun place to be.

In 2016, after consulting with countless LGBTQ activists, public health officials, and Grindr users, we added the optional HIV status field to give users more choice in the sexual health information they share, as well as more visibility around sexual health information in general. We followed the same process when we added the “vaccinated” tag upon launch of our My Tags feature so that users had more ways to exchange information about how they were managing the COVID-19 epidemic. Today, we are taking the next step in that process, once again following consultation with our public health partners and our own users, many of whom have been choosing to highlight their vaccination status, for multiple vaccines, in the “About Me” section of their profiles.

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That’s why we’re rolling out a vaccination status field which allows users to share whether they’ve accessed shots for COVID-19, monkeypox, and meningitis. COVID-19 has obviously impacted the entire world, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity; monkeypox has had a disproportionate and particular presence in our global queer community; and meningitis has hit our community particularly hard this calendar year, specifically in the US state of Florida.

We strive to provide the tools for Grindr users to have open conversations about their health and optimally communicate with each other about these crucial topics. We're also committed to maintaining our privacy and data security by only using this information to allow users to be transparent with people they meet, and never sharing it with advertising partners. This small addition will move us forward in that mission, while also creating additional pathways for users to learn about these health concerns.

We’re excited to announce a partnership with Spectrum Labs to implement machine learning models for proactively fighting bad actors on our platform. This will be an ongoing project: first we’re focusing on fighting drugs, solicitation, and underage users; then we’ll move to harassment; eventually we hope to build tools that could encourage friendlier behavior and safer interactions.

Spectrum and the Grindr Trust and Safety team are working together to train models carefully, and specifically for our user base, so that they are as accurate and fair as we can make them. Our goal is to implement machine learning with an ethical, human-centered framework that is in our community’s best interest and helps make Grindr a safer, more inclusive place for everyone. Spectrum Labs is a great partner for us – they recently put out a whitepaper on moderation best practices for the LGBTQ+ community – a nice complement to some of our own work.

Historically, Grindr has reviewed potentially illicit text on Grindr through two means: reports from our community and keywording. Reports from our community are crucial, and give us much-needed insight and context, and keywording allows us to detect content proactively, but is also limited – there can be a high number of false positives, terms change quickly, and context can be lost

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Machine learning will help us detect and take action on bad actors and illicit content automatically, which frees up our moderators to concentrate on the nuanced, difficult cases that really need their attention. Our moderators’ mental health is important to us, and this is one step we can take to make their jobs better.

We know that machine learning isn’t perfect, and that’s why we will still operate our industry-leading ban-appeal process, which gives all of our users the right to have a manual human review of any automated decision.

Because it’s important to get this right, we’re going to take our time to implement these models carefully over the next year. This is a big step, and I’m excited for what we’ll be able to do to improve the experience for our users all over the world.

-Alice Hunsberger, VP of Customer Experience | LinkedIn

Journalist Eric Marcus, founder and host of the Making Gay History podcast, has interviewed many queer pioneers in his day, but there’s something special about his interview with trans activist Marsha P. Johnson, a beloved figure in the LGBTQ civil rights movement, and Randy Wicker, one of the most visible gay rights activists of the 1960s.

As part of our Pride series on queer history, Eric has distilled an excerpt of their conversation that focuses on the night of the Stonewall Rebellion. Check out their convo below and listen to the full Making Gay History episode here.

Marsha:  

The way I winded up being at Stonewall that night, I was having a party uptown. And we were all out there and Miss Sylvia Rivera and them were over in the park having a cocktail.

I was uptown and I didn’t get downtown until about two o’clock, because when I got downtown the place was already on fire.  And it was a raid already. The riots had already started.  And they said the police went in there and set the place on fire.  They said the police set it on fire because they originally wanted the Stonewall to close, so they had several raids.  And there was this, uh, Tiffany and, oh, this other drag queen that used to work there in the coat check room and then they had all these bartenders.  And the night before the Stonewall riots started, before they closed the bar, we were all there and we all had to line up against the wall and they was all searching us.

Eric:  

The police were?

Marsha:

Yeah, they searched every single body that came there.  Because, uh, the place was supposed to be closed, and they opened anyway. ‘Cause every time the police came, what they would do, they would take the money from the coat check room and take the money from the bar.  So if they heard the police were coming, they would take all the money and hide it up under the bar in these boxes, out of the register.  And, you know, and sometimes they would hide like under the floor or something?  So when the police got in all they got was the bartender’s tips.

Eric:  

Who went to the Stonewall?

Marsha:  

Well, uh, at first it was just a gay men’s bar.  And they didn’t allow no, uh, women in.  And then they started allowing women in.  And then they let the drag queens in.  I was one of the first drag queens to go to that place.  ‘Cause when we first heard about this…and then they had these drag queens workin’ there.  They didn’t never arrested anybody at the Stonewall.  All they did was line us up and tell us to get out.

Randy:  

Were you one of those that got in the chorus lines and kicked their heels up at the police, like, like Ziegfeld Follies girls or Rockettes?

Marsha:  

Oh, no.  No, we were too busy throwing over cars and screaming in the middle of the street, ‘cause we were so upset ‘cause they closed that place.

Eric:

What were you screaming in the street?

Marsha:  

Huh?

Eric:  

What did you say to the police?

Marsha:  

We just were saying, no more police brutality and, oh, we had enough of police harassment in the Village and other places.  Oh, there was a lot of little chants we used to do in those days.

Eric:  

Now were there lots of people hurt at the Stonewall that night during the riots?

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Marsha:  

They weren’t hurt at the Stonewall.  They were hurt on the streets outside of the Stonewall ‘cause people were throwing bottles and the police were out there with those clubs and things and their helmets on, the riot helmets.

Eric:  

Were you afraid of being arrested?

Marsha:  

Oh, no, because I’d been going to jail for like ten years before the Stonewall I was going to jail ‘cause I was, I was originally up on 42nd Street.  And every time we’d go, you know, like going out to hustle all the time they would just get us and tell us we were under arrest. They’d say, “All yous drag queens under arrest, so we, you know, it was just for wearing a little bit of makeup down 42nd Street.

Eric:  

Who were the kinds of people you met up at 42nd Street when you were hustling up there.

Marsha:  

Oh, this was all these queens from Harlem, from the Bronx.  A lot of them are dead now. I mean, I hardly ever see anybody from those days. But these were like queens from the Bronx and Brooklyn, from New Jersey, where I’m from.  I’m from Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Eric:  

Now you mentioned an organization that…you were involved with.  What was the name?

Marsha:  

Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries with Miss Sylvia Rivera.

Randy:  

STAR.

Eric:  

What was that group about?  What was it for?

Marsha:  

Ah, it was a group for transvestites… men and women transvestites.

Randy:

It was a bunch of flakey, fucked up transvestites living in a hovel and a slum somewhere calling themselves revolutionaries.  That’s what it was in my opinion.  Now Marsha has a different idea.

Eric:  

What’s your opinion?

Marsha:  

Street Transvestites Action Revolutionaries started out as a very good group.  It was after Stonewall, they started, they started at GAA.  Mama Jean DeVente, who used to be the marshal for all the parades.  She was the one that talked Sylvia Rivera into leaving GAA, ‘cause Sylvia Rivera who was the president of STAR was a member of GAA, and start a group of her own. And so she started Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.  And she asked me would I come be the vice president of that organization.  The building was owned by Michael Umbers, who was in jail.  And didn’t Michael Umbers, when he went to jail, the city took over the building and they had everybody thrown out. But originally the rent was paid to Michael Umbers who went to jail, and Bubbles Rose Lee, Bubbles Rose Lee, who was secretary to STAR, she had all kinds of things around the building and stuff, you know.  So the city just came and closed the building down.

Curious about Stonewall? Check out these episodes of Making Gay History to learn more.                        

Hello! Today we are launching a new feature globally: Boost. Yes, you saw that right. Boost is now in beta. Not “Boots.” Although … boots!

Grindr Boost places you near the top of nearby users’ grids for up to an hour, allowing you to attract more attention from accounts that are still close by but maybe just out of the usual range. Boost also unlocks your “Viewed Me” list for 24 hours, so you can chat with anyone whose eye you caught.

At the end of the Boost, we'll send you a report with the number of taps, chats, and views you received—a Boost Report, if you will. And if you think you've hit the record for attention in your city, @ us on Twitter with a screenshot of your Boost Report so we can keep tabs on who is the Grindr Supreme.

Tips & Tricks                  

‍Be Photo

Boosters with a photo get far more attention than people who boost without. If you have a photo already, consider updating it before your next Boost session to catch someone's eye.

Be Ready

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While you can purchase a Boost at any time, be advised that it begins at the time of purchase so we recommend using it when you're ready and responsive. This way you'll be able to make the most of the attention. Speaking of attention, if you're looking to get the most taps, chats, and views then definitely boost during the evening or weekends.

Be Free

Staying online and responsive during your Boost will help you get far more attention than if you walk away from your phone. Oh, yeah, if you're an Unlimited subscriber be sure to turn off "incognito" before Boosting or you won't show up at all (don't worry, we'll remind you).

What's Next

We're still testing things out, so things may change—including how we promote your profile, pricing, and promotions for our subscribers. If you have any feedback, be sure to fill out the survey in the upper righthand corner of your Boost Report. Otherwise, check out our help pages for the latest on how Boost works.

Boost. Boots. Boost the house down!

Have fun!

Customer feedback is a vital part of our decision-making process here at Grindr. Our Voice of the Customer program is one way that we stay connected to our customers and their feedback. On a regular basis, we pull qualitative and quantitative data from customer emails, content moderation reports, UserVoice, app reviews, social media, and more.

Of course, our customers are also a key stakeholder, so we want to share with you what we are hearing (and doing to respond) as well.

Low Quality Ads

At the end of March, we saw an increase in the amount of feedback about ads on Grindr, particularly about ads coming to the product from third-party ad networks. The cause of the issue was the result of our migration to a new programmatic ad platform (the old one was sold and shut down). In the early days of the new platform, a number of issues arose, and ad quality was really bad. We have made good progress to address these initial issues, but continue to tune the system to improve ad quality and reduce issues. We have seen a big drop in complaints in the past couple of weeks. That said, we will often show lower quality ads than you may be used to seeing in other apps.

Why is that? First, we make the majority of our revenue from premium subscriptions. But for our free users, we still need to generate enough revenue to pay for the core service. High quality ads rely on “targeting” (ie, providing a lot of data about a user to an advertiser to help them select the best ads to show). But, for more than two years we have pursued the highest data privacy standards for our users. The result is that instead of highly targeted ads, we can only offer highly “untargeted” ads. Only a small number of companies (generally gaming apps) will even bid to show an ad to us given the absence of even industry-basics data from Grindr, such as age, gender, interest or location.

We know low quality ads are frustrating and ugly. They also don’t generate much revenue. We are working on new ways to improve the quality of our free experience, including the quality of ads. But we remain fully committed to maintaining or even increasing our industry-leading privacy practices. In the meantime, if you spot an ad that is particularly problematic or causing performance issues, please let our support team know so we can investigate.

Fewer Ads

In the last two years, one way we worked to reduce the impact of ads on the user experience was to dramatically reduce the number of ads we show. In the last two years, we have reduced the total ads shown to customers by over 50%. We have moved or removed ads that appeared at times that bothered you the most. Most recently, you may have noticed the elimination of the “banner ad” at the bottom of the app. That ad alone accounted for the majority of ads we showed customers, so pulling that ad was the most significant reduction in ads we have ever done. We also removed the full-screen ad that appeared at times after you blocked a profile.

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Bugs and Outages

We know these are a pain, and we’re always working to eliminate bugs and outages. Your bug reports are triaged by a dedicated support team and shared with our Engineers to help them reproduce the error and find solutions. The more information you provide (including screenshots and videos!) the better head start we have in getting things working for you again. One of the metrics we regularly review is a 7-day average of how many of you have had a crash free experience. As of the time of this post, 98% of iOS customers and 99% of Android customers have had a crash free experience this week. We want this number to be at 100%.

Discrimination and Racism

Not acceptable. We’ve heard a number of people in our community tell us about the casual and direct racism and discrimination they’ve experienced on Grindr. Your feedback is clear: you want us to do more to reduce harmful and hateful content. We’re down. We launched in-app warnings for some cases of bullying and harassment to discourage unacceptable behavior before the permanent step of banning. That said, we want to be clear that some cases are so severe and blatant we ban them immediately. We’ll be working on further versions of this warning system in Q2.

We’re also partnering with Spectrum Labs, and starting to use automated systems that identify and remove some content that violates our community guidelines even before it’s reported to us.

Finally, we’d like you to know that our content moderation team is specifically trained on bias, microaggressions, the LGBTQ+ community, and other dynamics that might be unique to our users. We have a newly created internal Escalations Team (that sits within our wider Trust and Safety department) to ensure we handle these situations with the nuance and care they deserve.

Spam and Scams

We hate them, too. We have a dedicated team of engineers, data scientists, and subject matter experts who specialize in fighting spam. In recent months, the team’s work has reduced spam to an all time low, but these efforts are not wars that can be “won.” Instead, it is an ongoing battle for Grindr (and all major internet services). We are increasing our investment here and hope to keep delivering improving results going forward. As we make changes and adjustments, so too do the scammers trying to get around our defenses by creating more elaborate scams.
Some new scams we’ve seen are crypto “investment” scams and blackmail scams to trick you into providing personal information. We have created a Scam Awareness guide so you can recognize red flags. It will take increasing diligence from our community to stay alert, and from the team at Grindr to come up with new ways to stop them before they get to you.

The Wall Street Journal has run a sensationalized story about the historical vulnerabilities in the adtech ecosystem that were improperly exploited to allegedly obtain data from some of Grindr’s former ad partners. The issues with adtech are real, unfortunately the WSJ is using scare tactics in a ploy for clicks.

A few things we want to make abundantly clear:

• What the WSJ describes would not be possible with our privacy practices today, practices we proactively implemented two years ago
• Grindr takes the privacy of its users extremely seriously, and we have put privacy before profit:
• Since early 2020, Grindr has shared less information with ad partners than any of the big tech platforms and most of our competitors, restricting the information we share to IP address, advertising ID, and the basic information necessary to support ad delivery
• Grindr does not share users’ precise location, we do not share user profile information, and we do not share even industry standard data like age or gender
• Grindr gives all our users globally the choice to control whether they receive personalized advertising    
• Grindr works with a limited number of ad partners who we review semiannually against rigorous data privacy and best practice standards
• The tradeoff of reducing the data shared with ad partners to below even industry standard is the ad quality is lower for users and of course Grindr’s ad revenue is lower as well

Our users value privacy, and we continue to put our users’ needs first. The issues threatening the LGBTQ+ community are real – issues like homophobia, prejudice, and state sponsored surveillance and violence, among others. Protecting privacy and protecting the LGBTQ+ community is and must be an ongoing effort for all of us. Grindr literally puts its money where its mouth is on this issue, I wish the WSJ would do the same.

-Patrick Lenihan, VP of Communications | LinkedIn

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Meet Dana Ross (she/her), our Software Development Manager

Dana’s been fascinated with technology’s ability to connect people, and she has spent over twenty years in the software industry. Prior to Grindr, Dana worked as a Software Development Manager at Chewy where she built a cross-functional team to improve the experience for subscribers. We got the chance to sit down with Dana to learn more about the web team’s work and how she sees her role in the bigger picture at Grindr.

Check out Dana’s Grindr story below, and take a look at our careers page to learn more about our open job opportunities.

Have you always worked in the software industry?

I’ve wanted to be a programmer since the second grade. It was the 1980s, and that was the first time I really got to see and touch a computer. The graphics weren’t great and the sound was barely better than the beeps from a microwave oven. But I was obsessed with the idea of a computer as a blank canvas and the possibilities it offered.

What drew you to the web specifically?

It was a natural evolution for me. Growing up, I didn’t have that many people in my life I could talk to about gender or sexuality. Bulletin Board Systems (BBSs) and the early internet got me through my teenage years. Online, I found hundreds of people eager to connect and share their inner worlds.

I’ve been creating for the web since 1996. It’s still a wonderful canvas for self-expression. The web’s also evolved into a powerful engine of commerce, publishing, and application creation, transforming lives across the globe like for our users at Grindr!

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Tell us why you joined Grindr. What do you love most about our mission and our culture?

I’m thrilled to work at a company using technology to bring queer folks together safely. It seriously energizes me. Plus, I get to work with amazing people every day. I love the collaborative problem-solving and sense of ownership on our team. I love having colleagues with a wide variety of backgrounds where we can learn from each other in support of our mission to connect the global LGBTQIA+ community.

What interesting problems is your Grindr team solving for and what are you looking forward to for the future?

Being on the web team exposed me to projects like Grindr Bloop and Grindr 4 Equality (G4E). Some of these sites were set up when the company was very young and the underlying technologies haven’t kept up with people’s expectations. We’re looking at moving Grindr’s web properties to modern content management platforms that we’ll be able to use more effectively.

This will hopefully provide a better and safer experience for our users while allowing us to scale as we continue to build out Grindr’s web presence. It will also help us continue to share and represent the progressive and impactful work on Grindr initiatives like Bloop and G4E.

What are your goals for growing your team?

As the web team grows, I plan to focus on finding solid engineers that embrace the human side of the job. Our team has to work closely with our partners on the Product team to make sure we’re aligned with Grindr’s business goals. We collaborate with folks across the organization responsible for the privacy, security, and experience of our users.

We strive for engineering excellence. But to be truly successful, we need more than exceptional engineers. We need compassionate, action-oriented advocates who recognize our responsibility to Grindr’s user base, the people using and loving the things we create.

Dana is hiring! If you are interested in working on a talented team of engineers that are working to solve unique challenges in support of the LGBTQIA+ community, you should apply for a role on her team today!

For more information on opportunities to work at Grindr, please visit our career site.

Welcome to #WorkItWednesday, Grindr's feature on employees and programs at the heart of the work we do to connect the global queer community.

Meet Daniel Kim (he/him), Senior Android Engineer at Grindr!

Daniel Graduated from Cal State Long Beach where he studied Computer Science. Prior to Grindr, Daniel held several positions where he got to work on projects including anomaly detection for a satellite system and the development of an NLP (Natural Language Processing) system. After wrapping those up, Daniel found himself on Grindr’s Android team and hasn't looked back. He joined Grindr in May 2021 and has loved working with a team of innovative engineers on impactful projects.

Check out Daniel’s Grindr story below, and take a look at our careers page to learn more about our open job opportunities.

What drew you to Android engineering specifically?

Android engineering is very fast-paced. It can be daunting how fast things change in the industry. But the complexities of mobile devices, coupled with the pace of change is exactly the reason that I love it. It keeps me on my toes and is really exciting. With coding languages and industry standards changing, keeping up with the evolution of the field allows me to constantly learn. For instance, a lot of legacy Android code is in Java but Kotlin is a new and much more sophisticated coding language that helps to push out features faster and creates a more reliable app for the user. Having to switch gears and learn a new coding language here at Grindr has helped me become a better developer.

Have you always worked in the software industry?

I have worked in a broad set of industries prior to joining Grindr. I have been a part of academia, FinTech, and different start-ups. While I have always worked in coding, I have always been more drawn to the technical pieces of a role rather than the industry. Working for Grindr was exciting because I got to work on interesting tech projects such as the migration from MVC to MVVM + CLEAN to clean up the architecture of the app. This made it so that we could write better and more stable code.

Tell us why you joined Grindr. What do you love most about our mission and our culture?

I was looking for a company that gave me the opportunity and autonomy to work on technical projects that I was passionate about. A lot of companies are so “feature-focused” that they set their engineers to work on that and only that. Grindr has the perfect balance of working on rolling out features and exploring new ways to make the app better for users. The company really values the quality of the work over the speed.

I really feel valued working at Grindr. People care about you and you are more than just your job. It feels wonderful to work on a team of invested coworkers where we all believe in the mission of the company of supporting the LGBTQ+ community in connecting worldwide.

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What is the most interesting thing about working for Grindr?

I keep going back to having the space to work on the things that I want to work on. Autonomy is not only allowed, but encouraged. That creates a much different environment from my previous roles. It also makes me feel like the team is moving the app forward when we get the freedom to be creative. One interesting thing I have been working on is refactoring the code to ultimately allow us to focus more on our user base and launch new and exciting features faster!

How have you grown professionally while on our team?

I have such a great team and manager to lean on for support at Grindr. My manager has really gone above and beyond to help me develop not only my technical skills but also my interpersonal skills. I can tend to be a little more reserved, but he has created a space where the team feels comfortable speaking up and voicing their opinions. He also encourages me to go outside of my comfort zone to learn and grow. I have recently started sitting in on interviews for the team and it has been great to contribute to that work, too.

I have always been interested in learning more about mobile application security. Grindr actually has a security champions program that brings together people from different engineering functions of the company to address security on the app. I have been able to work on security projects which has not only helped me develop a broader understanding of mobile security but also dive into an area that I was really interested in.

What interesting problems is your Grindr team solving for and what are you looking forward to for the future?

Recently I have been partnering with the growth team on some new projects geared towards that. This is my first time working on growth-focused projects and it's really interesting to think through the ways that we engage users with the app and implement new offerings to deliver more value for them.

We’ve also been upgrading the testing pipeline by shifting our Bitrise workflows, emphasizing better instrumentation, and unit testing and moving our UI test to Firebase Test Labs. This allows us to build faster features and reduce bugs and crashes, all while providing a better and even more secure experience for our users.

And this is just the beginning – our roadmap for upcoming features and user experience is so exciting and I’m really happy to be part of it.

If you are interested in working with talented engineers like Daniel at a company where you can see immediate impact on not only the work, but for the LGBTQ+ community, you should apply today!

As part of this year’s DPD, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to introduce myself as Grindr’s new Chief Privacy Officer.

While new to the role, I’m not new to Grindr, and over the past year I’ve been regularly collaborating with our product and engineering teams to support and enhance the privacy controls we offer to our users. I even had a chance to talk about these controls and the importance of digital safety at the WorldPride & EuroGames / Human Rights Conference in Copenhagen during last year’s WorldPride. It was definitely one of the highlights of my career.

As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, I know how important it is that the apps we use to connect with each other are safe, secure, and give us control over our data. In honor of this day dedicated to spreading awareness about online privacy, I wanted to share some of the ways in which you are in control of your privacy as you engage with our app and others on Grindr:

• The information you provide on Grindr is up to you. Remember, you control what you want other users to see on your profile - only add what you feel comfortable sharing, and feel free to delete photos and profile content whenever you want. Learn more about building your profile here.
• Customize your in-app privacy settings. Change whether users see you in Explore searches, whether your relative distance from other users is displayed, or whether you show up in Viewed Me lists by engaging these in-app settings.
• Utilize operating system-level settings. By changing your device’s OS settings, you can also control how Grindr and other apps use your location or how they send you notifications. For iOS, learn more about location services here and notifications here. For Android, learn more about location services here and notifications here.
• Download your data through our automated self-serve tool. Your personal data is yours and you can download a copy whenever you like. Learn more about accessing your personal data here.
• Opt-out of ad targeting. In the app, you can opt out of targeted advertising by our ad partners by clicking “Settings,” scrolling to the “Security and Privacy” section and clicking “Consent Preference Center.”
• Choose your preferred Grindr app icon. You can change the way the Grindr app appears on your device for extra discretion. More information about our discreet app icons is available here.
• Add a PIN for an extra layer of security. You can set a 4-digit code that will be required before opening Grindr on your device. Click here to learn more.

And in addition to our existing app privacy protections, we conduct thorough privacy reviews on new features and services to honor our commitment to user privacy.  

I’m proud of the work everyone here at Grindr does every day to protect the privacy and security of our users’ personal information. While DPD is the perfect time to introduce myself and reinforce good privacy practices, I look forward to being in touch throughout our privacy journey.  

If you have any questions, let us know at [email protected].

- Ron De Jesus, Chief Privacy Officer | LinkedIn

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