Grindr Launches “Kindr” Initiative to Help Combat Racism and Discrimination on App

Grindr launched the highly anticipated "Kindr" initiative to help combat racism, femmephobia, transphobia, sizeism, status-shaming, and other discriminatory behaviors commonly seen on the app.

The campaign is built around a combination of new community guidelines, stricter enforcement of non-discriminatory policies, and videos that highlight users experience of discrimination on the app.

"Sexual racism, transphobia, fat and femme shaming and further forms of othering such as stigmatization of HIV positive individuals are pervasive problems in the LGBTQ community," said Landen Zumwalt, head of communications at Grindr. "These community issues get brought onto our platform, and as a leader in the gay dating space, Grindr has a responsibility to not only protect our users, but also to set the standard for the broader community that we serve."

"Like many of us, I was a user of Grindr before I started working here, so I was already familiar with the racism and issues faced by people of color or non-masculine identifying people on the app," said Zach Stafford, the editor-in-chief of INTO. "I joined Grindr because I saw an opportunity for the company to be a leader and social change agent."

The new community guidelines for Grindr state, "We have a zero-tolerance policy for discrimination, harassment, and abusive behavior. We want you to be yourself, but not at the expense of someone else. Anyone found bullying, threatening, or defaming another user will be banned."

It continues, "We will also remove any discriminatory statements displayed on profiles. You're free to express your preferences, but we'd rather hear about what you're into, not what you aren't. Profile language that is used to openly discriminate against other users' traits and characteristics will not be tolerated and will be subject to review by our moderation team."

"If you see someone breaking the rules, please report them using the button found in the upper right corner of their profile. We'll take it from there. You may also encounter people on the app who upset or offend you without necessarily violating our guidelines. In those instances we recommend using the block feature, which will prevent you and the other user from seeing each other or having future contact."

It will be interesting to see how well Grindr is able to keep their promise, which will likely depend on the number of profile moderators they have. Nevertheless, it's nice to see that after nearly a decade of being the most popular app for gay/bi men, the Grindr team is starting to take action.

Below is the first video of "Kindr" Grindr where a number of Grindr users, including RPDR's The Vixen, discuss their experiences with discrimination on the app and break down the differences between racism and preferences.