So you think you might be the asshole? Maybe. Let’s chat. Enter our latest brainchild, the podcast that's here to dissect your worst (or maybe best?) impulses: Who’s The Asshole?, hosted by none other than Katya Zamolodchikova. And yeah, we're going there—everywhere, and nothing’s off-limits. We’re into sugar daddies, not into sugar-coating—so we’ll be serving up  the truth, the hole truth, and nothing butt the truth.

Alright, So What’s it About?

Ever open the door to a Grindr hookup expecting Mr. Right Now only to find Mr. Way Back When looking nothing like his 10-year-old flip phone pics? Did you send him packing? Or just shut the door with a “thanks, but no throwbacks?” Or maybe you blocked someone after they sent you a dick pic and then questioned yourself. Was it not artful enough? Were you looking for a few more inches? Or maybe you just wanted more woah, less oh.

In any case, at some point, you’ve probably asked yourself, "Was I the asshole?" Well, guess what? You're not the only one. Quick hookups, quicker ghostings—it can all get a bit messy, and sometimes it’s easy to forget there’s a real person on the other side of the screen. But also, when red flags pop up… sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, even if it leaves you wondering: “Am I the asshole?’

Those moments of self-reflection? Those gray areas where you’re not sure who shat the etiquette bed? That’s what we’re exploring with Who’s the Asshole? We dive deep—yes, that deep—into the messiest, juiciest stories of sex & dating we could get our grubby paws on. The conversations we’re having are raw, unfiltered, uncut, and everything in between—all in the spirit of better understanding each other without judgment. With a guest lineup of some of our favorite LGBTQ+ icons, Who’s the Asshole? is the podcast your dirty little ears didn’t know they needed.

But on the pod, you’re not just the listener, you’re also part of the fun. We set up a Grindr Voicemail (it may or may not be (510) ASS-HOLE…) and asked our users to send in their un-hole-iest stories for Katya and our guests to have their way with. Each episode, we pick our favorite stories and unpack them with a mix of sass, class, and a little bit of ass, showing that no story is too scandalous to share. You dialed in so we could dish out, and for that, we salute you.

Here’s Our Hole Lineup

• Orville Peck, the masked marvel of country music, opens up about the high notes and low blows of airport breakups. Grab your tissues and cowboy boots, y’all—it’s a tearjerker with twang.
• Jordan Firstman, writer/actor, film producer, and prophet of penis positivity, is here to preach the good word: every shape, every size, gets a gold star. Get ready to celebrate dick diversity.
• Trace Lysette, actress and producer goddess, dives into the mystery of why straight guys can't resist the Grindr glow.
• Saucy Santana, one of rap's fiercest forces, dishes on his heaux tales and how he has navigated homophobia in hip-hop.

Why Katya?

Why Katya? Babe, who else has the guts to get into your guts?

He's equal parts therapist, confessor, and anal-yst on all things sex and dating, always ready to skirt the fine line between being assertive and just being, well, an asshole.

When Grindr threw out the idea of getting down, Katya was already there, toolkit in hand—think enemas, poppers, and an unshakable spirit. Fearless, fucking hilarious, and ready to get into it.

He's all of us—just way funnier, so he was the obvious choice.

This Isn't Just Another Podcast (Well, it is, but you get the point)

Who’s The Asshole? is basically your new bible on navigating gay mess. We’re heading fist-first into the kind of stories that make prudes clutch their pearls. We’ve all had those nights where we’re either the star or the asshole (sometimes both), and it’s rarely pretty—but always enlightening (no, we’re not talking about anal bleaching).

So come on in, our holes have been expecting you.

The first episode of ‘Grindr Presents: Who’s the Asshole?’ premieres on February 15, 2024, and can be viewed on YouTube and streamed wherever you get your podcasts.

Every year, we compile anonymous aggregated data from our global user base and survey our community on an array of pop culture topics and trends for our annual Grindr Unwrapped report. The result is a fun, flirty, and informal snapshot of what our users loved for themselves and for the culture in the past year.

2023 was a BIG year for Grindr users, and there’s  plenty to be unwrapped—with more than 100 billion chats, 13 billion taps, and 1 billion private albums sent, our community definitely got busy. In addition to anonymous activity data from our 13 million monthly users, we surveyed more than 10,000 users on their top pop culture moments of 2023—from the ultimate gay gasp to the biggest babygirl. The resulting report provides a deeper look into global activity trends and spills all the tea on the year’s pop culture highlights. 

Some notable 2023 stats include: 

• Most Active Day/Time: Sunday at 6pm
• Most Explored City: London, England
• Country with the Highest % of Tops: Trinidad & Tobago
• Highest Percentage Of Feet Lovers: Italy
• Gay Gasp and Best Drag Moment: Troye Sivan’s “One of Your Girls” video
• Top Album and Song Of The Year: Kylie Minogue’s Tension and “Padam Padam” respectively

The queer community has always had its finger on the pulse of pop culture, and it’s always so much fun to see our users’ hot takes on the year via Unwrapped. Curious about which countries have the highest percentage of hung tops, femme bottoms, feet lovers, and more? Check your Grindr inbox or head to https://www.unwrapped.grindr.com/ for the full report. 

And remember, Grindr Unwrapped is not meant as a comprehensive or scientific report on global queer sex & dating behaviors. The anonymous, aggregated data only represents a subsection of our users (not all Grindr users include this information on their profiles), and Grindr itself only represents a subsection of the global queer community. So enjoy the report, don’t take it too seriously, and have a happy new year from all of us at Grindr.

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One year ago this month, Grindr shares debuted on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). This was an incredible milestone for a company built by gay people for gay people, and I love how often people remind me about the party Grindr and NYSE threw in front of the exchange—one unlike anything the cradle of capitalism had ever seen before.  

In the year since being public, we’ve delivered continued growth in our monthly active users to 13.5M and stellar financial results, consistently generating higher than expected revenue. We’ve harnessed that growth to fuel the launches of significant app enhancements—an updated home screen, videos in albums, and new chat features (“lost all my chats” is no longer an excuse for not getting back to someone!) are just a few of the ways we improved the Grindr experience for our users. Concurrently, we started to work on features users have been wanting us to build for years, such as improvements in how they indicate their intent in the app, and Teleport, which allows users to show their profile in a city other than where they are at present. We expect these and other features to launch next year. 

We also expanded our impact in making the lives of our community safer and more just, by enabling individuals in the US, Ireland, and Georgia to protect their health by ordering free at-home HIV test kits directly through our app. Since the launch of this initiative in the US, a quarter of a million kits were distributed in the first six months, and a quarter of those went to people who had never tested before. Our vision is to provide this service to all our users around the world.

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This year, a big focus for Grindr’s executive team has been to help build a culture where our employees can continually learn and grow, and unleash their full potential. Our goal is for all our employees to strive to achieve audacious goals through operational excellence. As part of this effort, we’ve been adding some critical talent to our team, with fantastic leadership hires in product, engineering, marketing, finance, and legal. 

As we celebrate the progress we’ve achieved so far, we remain committed to our mission of building the global gayborhood in your pocket. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved this year, but I know there is still a lot to do. 

Looking ahead, we are focused on rolling out initiatives that make it easier and safer for our users to connect however they’d like. Artificial intelligence for recommendations and better matching and specific programs for our users are just a couple of the things we will be investing in as we continue on our path to become the super-app for our community. 

What a year it has been for Grindr. I am looking forward to what lies ahead as we work to make a world where the lives of our global community are free, equal, and just.

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The privacy and safety of our users is paramount to how we think about building services for the Grindr community. Much as we are a community-focused app, we know that it is through community that we will develop the most effective tools to combat any ill, whether it be injustice, intolerance, or bad actors. Once such ill is the threat of child online sexual exploitation and abuse, which is an issue we approach with the utmost seriousness. 

That is why we are so glad to announce today we are joining the WeProtect Global Alliance and The Tech Coalition. WeProtect drives collaboration between governments, the private sector, and civil society to protect all children from the growing threat of sexual exploitation and abuse online, while The Tech Coalition specifically fosters relationships among technology leaders to protect children from online sexual exploitation and abuse.

The Grindr app is for adults only and all users are required to enter their age before opening an account. Use of our app by anyone other than law-abiding adults is a violation of our terms of service, and we ban accounts for anyone who violates those terms. If someone underage attempts to sign up for Grindr, we direct them to the Trevor Project—a nonprofit organization designed to support LGBTQ youth. 

We have long worked to ensure a safer internet for children and to keep them off our app, but it is simply not something Grindr alone, or any one company or one institution alone, could ever accomplish effectively. We are so glad for the efforts of groups like WeProtect and The Tech Coalition who bring together stakeholders from across the ecosystem to make meaningful progress against the crucial goal of protecting our children.

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“"The Tech Coalition is pleased to welcome Grindr, joining our growing membership of 36 tech companies working to keep young people safe online. Together we will continue to drive forward our shared mission and develop critical advances in technology, research, and information-sharing amongst industry. Only by working together can we create a safer online world for kids." — Sean Litton, Executive Director, Tech Coalition.

“I am pleased to welcome Grindr as a new member of WeProtect Global Alliance. Their work within our Alliance will play an important role in building a digital world designed to protect children from sexual exploitation and abuse.” — Iain Drennan, Executive Director, WeProtect Global Alliance

While Grindr will continue to invest a great deal of time and effort into keeping underaged users off our platform and safe from online exploitation and abuse, what we know is that partnership is the key to developing broad solutions that respect privacy and enhance user safety and the security of all people online.

Grindr looks forward to working with WeProtect, The Tech Coalition, and others, to build an ever safer and more secure internet.

Learn more at: 

• https://www.weprotect.org/who-we-are/‍
• https://www.technologycoalition.org/

We at Grindr are celebrating the decision by the Japanese Supreme Court to make legal gender recognition for trans people a simpler and more humane process.

Japan long had a requirement that trans people undergo surgical sterilization before they could have access to government-issued identification documents that reflect their gender identity. The court accurately and powerfully characterized this as a “cruel choice between accepting the sterilization surgery that causes intense bodily invasion and giving up important legal benefits of being treated according to their gender identity.” 

Not only did this requirement stand as an arbitrary judgement about trans people’s ability to be parents, it is also widely considered to be a form of torture. In April of 2017, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that such a requirement was a serious infringement of human rights, and we are thankful the Japanese courts have now followed suit.

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Of course, there are many further steps to guarantee the full rights of trans and all LGBTQ people in the country. The Supreme Court did not rule, for example, on requirements that trans people undergo transition-related surgeries before the government will recognize their gender. This is a problem not only because many trans people are unable to access such surgeries, but also because many do not want them. The country also continues to require that trans people seeking legal gender recognition be unmarried and not have children under eighteen years old, all of which must eventually be reformed. Finally, Japan remains the only G7 country without marriage equality.

Still, this represents an enormous step forward for the LGBTQ legal environment in Japan, and for human rights broadly. This is only the twelfth time the Supreme Court has handed down a judgment that a law was unconstitutional since the establishment of the system in 1947. Personally, as someone who has been engaged with the Japanese queer movement for many years, I am filled with hope to see this development and am looking forward to more successes from Japanese activists in the coming years.

When it comes to advocating for our users, there are few topics we are more passionate about than the interconnected issues of privacy and safety, which matter for many reasons, ranging from highly personal circumstances to government persecution in the more than 60 countries around the world, where it is tragically still illegal to be a member of the LGBTQ community. 

Since the founding of Grindr, many of our users have had very real needs to maintain privacy and discretion on the app. This is a key reason for certain important nuances of the app, like not requiring a profile photo. Privacy and safety components are also built directly into numerous product features, such as our private album feature that enables the private sharing of photos between users. As we build new features we will continue to integrate privacy into the design to safeguard user information. 

At the same time, we understand that safety is also a critical need for our community of users; therefore, we strive to eliminate illicit activity from the app. We are grateful to our users for actively reporting such activity, which helps keep our community safe. Over the last few years, we’ve made great strides in improving our product experience in this regard. Since January 2021, we have seen a 50%+ reduction in user reports of illegal or prohibited activity - even as our user base has grown. This has included an 86% reduction in spam reports from users and a 39% reduction in accounts banned for suspected solicitation. 

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These reductions result from our work and commitment to innovation internally, in addition to the added strengths of our service providers, to ensure we are removing bad actors and addressing problematic accounts. As part of this work, we have: 

• Partnered with Spectrum Labs to proactively prevent sexual solicitation on the app by developing a machine learning model to detect solicitation in chat. This custom model has been very effective, and coupled with our built-in auto-blocking of certain keywords and emojis has helped cut down on prohibited activity on Grindr. In the future, we expect responsible AI and ML to play an even more critical role in proactively identifying and eliminating illegal activity in the app, while also respecting user privacy.

• Worked closely with Partner Hero in matters like content moderation and account banning, to ensure we can quickly remove accounts that are suspected of illicit activity. Grindr bans a significant number of accounts per month, which would not be possible without the external moderation team of over 150 experts. We expect to create and/or incorporate additional technology tools to help make this process even quicker and more seamless in the quarters to come. Given our belief in maintaining a lean operational organization internally, the success we’ve seen with Partner Hero gives us confidence that we can continue to expand the partnership and onboard other similar service providers as we continue to add new safeguards to our platform. 

We will continue to build on the work we’ve undertaken over the last three years to improve the safety of our app, while keeping privacy front and center. We will be tightening the integration between our internal product management and technology teams, and both internal and external customer support teams, to ensure users are getting the best possible service. With a combination of skilled security professionals and content moderators, plus the latest AI and machine learning technology, we can continue to mitigate spam and bad actors on the app while continuously innovating and building privacy controls our users care about.

Ultimately, our users’ needs and preferences drive the experience they have on Grindr, and we’re listening. They have told us loud and clear that privacy, trust, and safety are top priorities. And if it’s a priority for our users, it’s a priority for us, which is why we’re investing heavily in this space. This will always be a focal point on our journey towards becoming the global gayborhood in your pocket, and through our success create a world where our community is free, equal, and included.

We at Grindr applaud the decision handed down by the Supreme Court last week that decriminalizes consensual sex between men in the country of Mauritius. We are grateful to the Mauritian activists and lawyers who have worked so hard to achieve this powerful victory.

The stakes of decriminalization are high, because authoritarian laws that reject our right to exist push gay people into the shadows, force us to live in fear, and prevent us from making full contributions to the world. This is true regardless of whether the government actively enforces laws that criminalize consensual sex between men and makes arrests, or not. 

The threat of turning our community members over to the police can keep us from achieving our full potential in life, even when that threat could be empty. It gives the people around us something they can use against us if we’re ever in serious competition with them or if we disagree. Merely having a law on the books that says we are illegal–simply because of who we are and who we love–sends the message to our young people that they are sick, their futures will not be bright, and they should not value their own lives.

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For these reasons, overturning laws that criminalize being LGBTQ in the sixty-five countries that make it illegal is a key priority for Grindr for Equality (G4E). 

This past summer, Grindr for Equality team members visited Mauritius to participate in the Pan-Africa ILGA conference. We had the opportunity to experience the country and get to know the Mauritian activists who have made this momentous change possible. The time we spent there only increases our excitement at the news and invigorates the congratulations we send to the entire country. 

We at Grindr will continue to support activists around the world in their efforts to achieve similarly positive outcomes, even in the places where it can feel impossible. Our community has shown itself to be powerful. We will make it happen, and we at Grindr are so proud to be one of many institutions pushing us in that direction.

Róisín Murphy's stunning new album begins with a statement of intent: "I feel my story's still untold, but I'll make my own happy ending." Over the next 54 minutes, the Irish singer-songwriter and self-described "disco dolly" – one with a difference, which we'll get to later – earns that happy ending time and time again. Gliding from percolating electro ("Simulation") to sumptuous disco ("Something More"), and banging acid house ("We Got Together") to full-on Studio 54 glitz ("Narcissus"), Róisín Machine is surely the dance album of the year.

"The album is called that because I am a machine — I just keep creating”

Murphy says when I call her in Ibiza, where she’s taking a late-summer working vacation which yields an awesome lockdown performance. "And it rhymes a bit with Róisín, so hopefully people can really get their heads around saying my name correctly!" (For the record, it's pronounced "Ro-sheen.")

Murphy has often been branded “underrated” – a term she doesn’t much like – but it’s probably more accurate to call her “the connoisseur’s dance diva.” Since she broke through in the mid-’90s as one half of eccentric electronic duo Moloko, she’s become known for making fabulous, adventurous, and sometimes challenging music that makes you want to move. At times, that music has fully crossed over into the mainstream: an Ibiza-flavored remix of Moloko's "Sing It Back" topped the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart in 1999, and remains one of the most recognizable club hits of its era.

Along the way, she’s also mastered the visual side of divadom.

The cover of her second solo album, 2007’s Overpowered, shows her wearing a conceptual runway outfit in a London “greasy spoon” café – the British equivalent of a diner. The album, one of the best dance-pop collections of its decade, sold respectably in the U.K. and Ireland but didn't make Murphy a household name. When I interviewed her for a British newspaper two years ago, Murphy recalled wryly: “I got reviews saying, ‘Why’s she not a pop star? Well, look at the sleeve, she’s a freak!’ Then six months later you’ve got Lady Gaga wearing exactly the same fucking outfit.”

Still, Murphy’s fanbase has remained loyal ever since Overpowered and quite rightly includes a large LGBTQ contingent. "To me, Róisín Murphy is an icon and a legend and just incredibly talented," RuPaul's Drag Race alum Detox told music magazine NME earlier this year. Indeed, in a recent interview with The Irish Times, Murphy acknowledged her deep-rooted queer appeal by saying quite brilliantly:

"If I want to be famous, I can just go to a gay club."

Of course, Murphy is no fame-seeking stage school kid. Her family moved from a small town in Ireland to Manchester – the U.K.'s third largest city, and buzziest next to London – when she was 12 years old. Three years later, her parents divorced and returned to Ireland, but Murphy decided to stay in the north of England by herself. Over the next few years, she found her calling in life – music – by frequenting nightclubs in Manchester and neighboring city Sheffield.

Today, she speaks almost evangelically about her first trip to Trade, a highly influential London gay club that opened in 1990. “I went to Trade when I was 16 – I made the journey down to London and queued three times round the block because I kept getting turned down. I couldn’t get in because I was too young,” she recalls. “Eventually they just gave up and let us in. I remember going up on the fucking balcony and looking down at all the lads in their Calvin Klein underpants just squashed into every bit of space. There were lasers pinging around everywhere, and I remember saying to my friend: ‘I’ve fucking come home here. This is Babylon. I love this wee place!”

On this magical-sounding night, Murphy says she and her friend were “looked after by drag queens” and ended up dancing “till nine in the morning without any drugs or anything – at the time, that wouldn’t have crossed my mind.” Back in Sheffield, Murphy immersed herself in a club scene that was “very mixed in terms of race and sexuality" and “had a real family feel to it.” A few years later, she met musician Mark Brydon, who would become her Moloko bandmate as well as her romantic partner. The chat-up line Murphy used on Brydon at a party – “Do you like my tight sweater? See how it fits my body!" – is preserved forever in the title of Moloko’s 1995 debut album, Do You Like My Tight Sweater?

During this formative period she also met her longtime collaborator Richard Barratt, a.k.a. DJ Parrot, who co-wrote and produced all of Róisín Machine.  

“I was always brought up in dance music to know that it came from gay culture,” she says today. “You know, it was not a big surprise to find that out because I knew it from the very beginning. That was where the best parties were, the best music, the best drugs, and the best craic. You know?”

Moloko's career trajectory spiked in 1999 when DJ Boris Duglosch's remix of "Sing It Back" gave them their first huge mainstream hit in the U.K. and Ireland. A year later, they scored another big hit with the glistening disco gem "The Time Is Now," which peaked at number two in the U.K. and helped its eclectic parent album Things to Make and Do to go platinum. After that, Moloko would only release one more album, 2003's Statues, which featured lyrics which seemingly documented the breakdown of Murphy and Brydon's personal relationship. "Some days I question the suggestion you might not exist at all," Murphy sings on the mournful title track. "Can we meet and talk it over? Would you be kind enough to call?"

Murphy then launched a fascinating solo career characterized by its unpredictability. She fused jazz with experimental electronica on her debut solo album, 2005's Ruby Blue, before embracing glossy dance-pop on 2007's Overpowered. Prime Murphybangers such as the title track and “Movie Star” still sound tremendous today. Then, having only dropped a few one-off singles during a quieter period where she became a mother, she returned in 2014 with Mi Senti, an EP of classic Italian pop covers. Murphy said at the time that she learned each song phonetically because she didn’t speak “a word of Italian." Soon after came a couple of acclaimed prog-disco albums, 2015’s Hairless Toys and 2016’s Take Her Up to Monto, which cemented her reputation as a true dance music auteur. Róisín Machine, her most immediate collection since Overpowered, feels like a new career peak from an artist who never stops flexing her creative muscles.

For the cover of Take Her Up to Monto, Murphy rocked a hi-vis jacket and hard hat to create a look that could legitimately be branded “construction worker drag.” It wasn't inspired by the Village People, but by Murphy's passion for post-modern architecture and her family background. “The Murphy construction gene is very much part of me,” she says. “I've got plenty of uncles who laid roads and tarmacked people's gardens and all that, you know.” Over the years she’s given us so many distinctive looks – from Overpowered’s offbeat fashionista to Róisín Machine’s punky disco queen – that it’s no surprise she’s often called a drag queen.

"I was told years ago by my gay friends: 'You are a drag queen.' And I remember thinking, ‘What do you mean by that? Am I a masculine woman?' And I was a bit put out by it," she recalls. "But now, I totally embrace it. I'm totally a drag queen and I was born that way. I mean, as a child, I was a total exhibitionist."

Murphy clearly appreciates that drag isn't just about changing the way the world perceives you. "I think the thing that's very misunderstood about exhibitionism is that people think you do it to be looked at," she says. "But you don’t. You do it because of the joy of putting the exhibition together. It's a creative pursuit like making a painting or a piece of music or a film."

When I ask what the most misunderstood thing about Róisín Murphy is, she gives an answer that kind of encapsulates her career to date.  "I learned everything in the real," she says. "I learned to dance on the dance floor – not in front of a mirror. I learned music from DJs and going clubbing from the age of 15. Everything I'm doing is coming from a super-real place, even though I am at the same time a disco dolly.”

By now, Murphy is on a roll. “And you can take me like that,” she continues. “You can put me in there with Kylie and all the other people who are 'saving 2020' and all that. But I'm not like them, and I'm not coming from that same place. I'm not trained – I'm self-made. I think it's because I'm a girl and a singer, but…

“Hopefully the next album will get the message across: that I'm as much like Radiohead as I am Kylie Minogue."

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As we saw in March and have seen repeatedly, Egypt is the single most dangerous country in the world for Grindr users, where the government engages in incomprehensible brutality against LGBTQ people. Thus we applaud Senate Foreign Relations Chair Ben Cardin’s stated intention to hold the Egyptian government accountable for its human rights record.

Although the danger to our community members in Egypt comes from many quarters, much of it is perpetrated by the police. Officers are trained at scale on how to use community spaces, including those online, to catfish; entrap; and ultimately arrest LGBTQ people, simply for being who we are and loving who we love.

We have spent nearly the past decade creating safety features and strategies to mitigate these challenges for users in Egypt and the more than 60 countries where being gay is illegal. In these parts of the world the app doesn’t tell other users a person’s exact distance, users receive a weekly safety reminder in local languages, more screenshot blocking has been put in place, and users have access to additional features like our discrete app icon and unlimited retractable messages. All of this has been developed in consultation with safety-focused technologists and LGBTQ activists working on the ground in these countries.

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We do this work and keep the app turned on in places like Egypt because we believe gay, bi, and trans people there deserve to be able to connect, and they deserve to have the best safety features we can offer while they’re doing so. 

We take our position in the global LGBTQ ecosystem extremely seriously, which is why we created Grindr for Equality over ten years ago–to promote queer safety, health, and human rights around the world. But the LGBTQ movement needs allies in order to achieve the vision of full equality, and the U.S. government should use its considerable influence, as it has before, to advance human rights in this area. We encourage U.S. officials to support Senator Cardin’s demand for “concrete, meaningful, and sustainable steps to improve the human rights conditions in [Egypt],” including to end the widespread police persecution of LGBTQ people.

As the leading social networking platform for anyone who wants to connect with the LGBTQ+ community, our app serves over 13 million monthly active users in almost every country in the world. In many of these countries, the Grindr app is the only safe way for our users to discover, share, and navigate their communities. Protecting our users’ interests and putting them in control of their personal data are top priorities for us and critical to the success of our business. 

Norway’s Privacy Appeals Board recently issued a decision regarding a legacy user consent process we used several years ago, before key regulatory developments interpreting the application of GDPR. We strongly disagree with the Board’s decision and are evaluating our options, including asking Norway’s courts to reverse the administrative agency. At the same time, we share the Norwegian Board’s commitment to privacy and want to provide an overview of how Grindr addresses this critical area.

Privacy could not be more important to our users. That’s why certain features, like giving users the choice to decide what information to include in their profile, including not requiring a profile photo, have been built into the app from day one. We’ve also built privacy and safety components directly into numerous parts of the product, such as our private albums that enable private sharing of photos between users. As we build new features, we continue to integrate privacy into every facet of the design to safeguard user information, which is what our users have come to expect. 

Since the period at issue in the decision, and under new ownership and new management, Grindr has invested heavily to adopt industry-leading privacy practices and tools to protect and empower our users by giving them more control over the data they publicly disclose.

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We have a dedicated Privacy team that works across the company to advance our commitment to privacy, and we use a leading privacy consent management platform, powered by One Trust, which enables users to decide whether and how their data can be shared with ad partners. 

Grindr has never allowed for targeted advertising by profiling our users or based on special categories of personal data such as ethnicity, political views, or sexual orientation. One of the most common pieces of feedback we hear from our users is a desire for more relevant advertising. Yet one of the reasons the advertising users see is not always relevant to them is because, contrary to standard industry practices, Grindr explicitly chooses not to share data on users’ age, gender, or location with advertisers even if the user opts in to get personalized ads.

Advertising on our platform, while a small portion of our total revenue, helps defray the costs of Grindr’s free offering, which includes many more features than the free products of our industry peers. Currently, more than 85% of Grindr’s revenue comes from purchases of subscriptions and add-on products from just 7% of our total users. 

Grindr is proud to support and connect the global LGBTQ+ community. We believe regulators should treat Grindr users the same way they treat users of other dating apps that cater largely to the straight community.

We look forward to continuing our commitment to privacy as we work to serve our users and create a world where our community is free, equal and included.

Today marks the first day back in the office for many Grindr employees, and the positive energy is palpable. As we return to working together IRL as part of our hybrid work model, I look forward to connecting with our Grindr colleagues and community in person. I strongly believe–and the research shows–that regularly working together in person will position us and our business for success, and from that success we can help change the world for the better.

We are at an inflection point where we can capitalize on Grindr's global potential and audaciously and passionately go after our mission to be the global gayborhood in your pocket. As part of that, our vision is to make the world and lives of our users freer and more just through our success as a business. 

We have a huge opportunity that’s ours to seize, and in order to do that, we need to be intentional about how we operate and continue to move the company forward.

Our drive and perseverance have always stemmed from our commitment to the LGBTQ+ community. We aim to influence positive change and leave an indelible mark, not just as a platform, but as a movement. Collaboration, innovation, and our unique Grindr synergy are essential for us to do this effectively.  It is critical for us to be better connected so we can collaborate more effectively, coach and mentor each other, and  achieve these goals as a team.  

Building our next chapter 

Over  the last 18 months, we've learned a thing or two about adapting to a post-pandemic world. While remote work brought its perks, it has also become clear that in-person collaboration is invaluable. And while a return to office might sound like a return to old times, let’s be clear: today does not mark a return to old ways, but rather an evolution into  something better. 

We’ve seen via our continued financial and business growth what works: having a very clear focus on the key initiatives that are most valuable to our users and pushing for significant productivity and stellar operational execution. This focus and taking advantage of our time together in person will take our business to the next level.

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That's the ethos behind our hybrid work model of two-days-a-week in office. It offers a balanced blend of office and remote days, designed with both productivity and flexibility in mind. Our hybrid work model isn’t an outlier. In fact, we're proud to say it offers more leeway than many of our peers’ in-office policies.  

Our decision to adopt a hybrid work model was in the works for quite some time. We did our research and charted our course. Beginning in the second quarter of this year we took the first steps toward a hybrid work model by starting to recruit engineers primarily in Chicago, one of the company’s two engineering hubs. 

As we welcome teams back to the office today, wherever that may be, our focus is clear: ensuring Grindr remains a valuable product and resource for the global LGBTQ+ community and an exceptional place to work.

Returning to work as a unified community

We're looking forward to further building our community of Grindr colleagues, spending more time together, and galvanizing our collective ambition. Together, we'll continue to set ambitious goals and deliver remarkable products that reflect the spirit of the LGBTQ+ community. 

I strongly believe that we need to be together in person on a regular basis in order to have  the most success as a business. And from that success we can help change the world for the better. This new chapter will allow us to attract talent that embraces collaboration, strengthen our identity by building strong working relationships, and establish  healthy productivity goals and mutual accountability that will make us truly unstoppable.

And we’re building an amazing team that will help us achieve these goals. For those interested in joining us, check out our open positions here.

An estimated 40,000 people took to the streets of SoMa in San Francisco this past Sunday for Folsom Street Fair’s Megahood2021. After last year’s virtual-only event, Folsom was back to in-person festivities—with added COVID safety protocols—and people were eager to make up for lost time. Wearing leather, whips, chains, pup masks, chastity belts, and everything in between (or, in many cases, nothing at all), attendees celebrated queer kink and fetish culture with creativity to spare. We captured some of the magic below—see you next year, Folsom.

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Grindr is a proud presenting sponsor of Folsom Street Fair. #GrindrxFolsom