The gay hook-up app Grindr said on Monday that it would remove an ethnicity filter which allows people to filter users based on race.
Wrote the company on social media: “We stand in solidarity with the #Black LivesMatter movement and the hundreds of thousands of queer people of color who log in to our app every day. We will not be silent, and we will not be inactive. We will continue to fight racism on Grindr, both through dialogue with our community and a zero-tolerance policy for racism and hate speech on our platform. As part of this commitment, and based on your feedback, we have decided to remove the ethnicity filter from our next release.”
The Verge reports: “The ethnicity filters have been controversial for years, but they went unchanged even as Grindr launched an anti-racism campaign on the platform in 2018. That same year, Landen Zumwalt, Grindr’s former head of communications, told The Guardian that the company discussed removing the ethnicity filters but wasn’t ready to get rid of them. The team wanted to talk to its users first, he said, and the filters gave people in minority groups a chance to match more easily with one another.”
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