There are people in my life who know where I live, what I do for a living and what TV shows I watch… Some even know who I’ve slept with.

But considerably fewer know my sexual preferences, what kind of men I actually like, when I was last tested and exactly how far away I am at 11:47 p.m.

And then there is Grindr.

This week, Grindr agreed to pay £26 million to settle a UK lawsuit involving thousands of users who accused the company of improperly sharing sensitive personal information, including, in some cases, HIV status. Grindr denied liability and the allegations concern data practices from before 2020.

Obviously, this is a privacy matter.
But it also made me realize something: Grindr knows A LOT about us!

I think that’s because Grindr isn’t just another app on our phones anymore. It has become part of gay culture.

Yes, there is sex involved (obviously), but it’s also where we flirt, date, make friends, see who’s around, find someone we haven’t seen since 2019 or discover that our very married boss is apparently a closeted sub c*mdumpster.

A hookup becomes a friend, a friend becomes a hookup, an ex stays around (God, I hate myself sometimes) and someone you’ve slept with twice is somehow still sending you memes four years later (Andy, please stop, it’s awkward).

Grindr didn’t invent this mess, it just gave it GPS.

And because we use it for so much, we give it a lot in return: Our location, our nudes, our preferences, our health status, our kinks. Even, in a way, our desire to feel wanted and accepted.

Most apps know what shoes I want to buy. Grindr knows where my next toxic hookup is.

That’s a very different kind of data!

And for gay men, privacy around our sex lives has never been a small issue. We know what can happen when deeply personal information ends up in the wrong hands.

Which makes Grindr’s own description of itself as a “Global Gayborhood in Your Pocket” particularly interesting, because they’re not entirely wrong, Grindr has become part of our gayborhood.

But if we’re going to put this much of ourselves inside one app, we need to be able to trust that what happens in the gayborhood stays in the gayborhood.