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Comment by NelsonMinar | Hacker News Reader

It's astonishing me how bad the Grindr tech is and how abusive the company is and yet it still persists as the most popular gay hookup app. I mean this company was selling people's HIV status to advertisers and yet we still use it.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/grindr-users-see...

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>It's astonishing me how bad the Grindr tech is and how abusive the company is and yet it still persists as the most popular gay hookup app.

I wonder why the other big apps don't use their own tech to make a separate gay hookup app. The only thing I can see, other than possibly anti-gay bias, is that they see the market as not being worthwhile financially due to other reasons.

there are plenty of competing apps. they simply don't have the install base grindr has. it was the first to market well before tinder. other apps do exist particularly in central and eastern europe with local tech and install bases but they don't have the same reach.

also it's a bit disingenuous to call grindr a dating app, it's almost purely a sex hookup app but they would rather pretend it's something else entirely.

I think it's due to the toxicity of dating apps in general. But Grindr gets more freedom to treat users poorly since the overall user success rate is better than on mixed sites like Tinder, at least in the short term. It's also tougher to find someone IRL without an app when you're in the 5%. They have a captive audience for now.

People keep using the apps because it's overwhelmingly the easiest way to date/whatever, which is a really high priority in the life of a lot of people, and they're going to use the apps with the best results even if it feels sort of shitty to do so.

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