5 ms·

Grindr has also been used by oppressive regimes to find and imprison gay people: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/10/02/egypt-police-lgbt-dating-apps-grindr-jail

Grindr has also been used by oppressive regimes to find and imprison gay people: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/10/02/egypt-police-lgbt-dating-apps-grindr-jailed-torture-sexual-abuse-human-rights/ https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2020/10/02/egypt-police-lgbt-dati... Add that to 3rd party apps that can find your exact location (https://www.engadget.com/2018-09-15-grindr-location-info.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-09-15-grindr-location-info.htm...) and Grindr becomes a dangerous weapon against LGBT people.

jacquesm 5y ago
Smartphones are dangerous in some contexts.
- CamperBob2 5y ago
  Then again, many powerful tools are.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Most dangerous tools are predictable in their danger. Take firearms; modern firearms are reliable[0] and tend to do exactly what their current handler intends. You would not for example expect your firearm to leave its case in the middle of the night and blow your windows out, for example. Smart phones are unpredictable in their danger. You would not expect Grindr to sell you out to an oppressive regime, for example. Nor would you expect your private dating profile to get you fired. These are unpredictable outcomes well outside the range of what most users would expect. 0 - Truly accidental discharges where the firearm goes off without a trigger press are rare and make the news. Most negligent discharges are the result of people mishandling the firearm, rather than the firearm doing something unexpected.
    - phkahler 5y ago
      >> Nor would you expect your private dating profile to get you fired. I think the mistake is thinking those profiles are private. How could you ever meet someone without some ability for people to see your profile? I've never tried any dating sites, so may be overlooking something obvious to others.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        There’s an expectation that that information is compartmentalized somehow, a bit like how everyone at a gay bar can see you there but only the people at the gay bar can see you.
        throwawayboise 5y ago
        Nothing on social media, or really any online service, should ever be considered private. It may claim to be, but ultimately it's not in your control.
        mPReDiToR 5y ago
        I've been telling my friends/family/anyone who will listen for two decades plus that anything you type into a computer is probably public now, or will be one day. Never type anything you wouldn't want to be taken out of context and read out in court, either a law court, or the court of public opinion.
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        That’s factually true, but: 1) That’s not what people expect. 2) There is an argument that it shouldn’t be this way.
    - dmos62 5y ago
      You could say that giving an untrusted app privileges is like giving a gun to someone you don't know.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        I don’t disagree, it just doesn’t seem like that is what most people think.
        dmos62 5y ago
        I blame UX design, personally. Trying to make everything conceptually trivial made interfaces that glossed over a lot of important details. I'm all for simplicity, but this is shoving complexity under the carpet.
    - agys 5y ago
      Unrelated to main topic, but a case exactly as described by you made the news yesterday in Italy: a man accidentally firing a gun after falling down (accidental trigger press or not is still investigated) [Article in Italian]. https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/07/21/news/voghera_assessore_leghista_spara_e_uccide_un_uomo_dopo_una_lite_in_piazza-311209068 https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/07/21/news/voghera_as...
      - dogorman 5y ago
        > (accidental trigger press or not is still investigated) It seems like a moot distinction to me. Take Glock for example; they make a big deal about their guns having "three automatic independently-operating mechanical safeties." But the fact of the matter is a glock has no traditional fire/safe toggle safety. ALL the safety of a glock is based on the premise that the trigger will not be unintentionally pulled when a round is in the chamber. The obvious consequence of this is people getting shot by completely accidental trigger pulls. Whether you drop the gun and it goes off or the trigger snags on your clothing and the gun goes off, a gunshot accident is still a gunshot accident, and both are consequences of the gun's design.
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        Glocks are still not unpredictable by my metric. Yes, the margins of safety might be narrower than you’d prefer, but it’s not going to go bang without a trigger press. It’s a very predictable firearm in that way. That being said the first generation was prone to slam fires, where chambering a round sets the firearm off. Now that is an unpredictable tool. Also, historically snagging the trigger on clothing has always been a source of negligent discharges, even before Gaston Glock was around. The allied army in WW2 officially required that most soldiers issued a handgun carry it with an empty chamber due to the prevalence of injuries, and the M1911 has a grip and manual safety.
        dogorman 5y ago
        I think you've missed my point, > Glocks are still not unpredictable by my metric. [...] it’s not going to go bang without a trigger press. It’s a very predictable firearm in that way. I agree with this completely. Glocks are predictable. Where we part ways is that I don't believe predictability is the metric that should be optimized for. People not getting shot is the important metric; predictability is only important insofar as it relates to that. But as demonstrated by glocks, predictability is not the end-all-be-all when it comes to people not accidentally shooting themselves. As for soldiers in WWII, they also had piss-poor to non-existent trigger discipline. A 1911 is a safer gun than a glock due to the manual safety, but still won't protect you from handling it in unsafe ways. Glocks have that same problem, but worse because they lack manual safeties which function as one last line of defense when you fuck up everything else.
tyingq 5y ago
The triangulation thing using Grindr's private api is pretty bad. I'm surprised Grindr doesn't "fuzz" the location enough to at least make it much less accurate.
- azinman2 5y ago
  That'd be a nice option, but limits the use case.
- colpabar 5y ago
  >I'm surprised Grindr doesn't "fuzz" the location enough to at least make it much less accurate. Why would they? Doing that would make their data less valuable. Just because grindr is the "gay hookup app" doesn't necessarily mean that the people who operate it care about gay people's (or anyone's) privacy. According to this [0], grindr ranks #4 of all mobile apps when it comes to collecting personal information. It's a free app that requires your location to use it, which means that it's a personal info collection app first, and a dating app second. [0]: https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/data-grabbing-apps/762166/ https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/data-grabbing-apps/...
  - aqme28 5y ago
    There's a difference between the location data Grindr serves to its users and the location data they acquire to use internally. You're talking about the latter, but OP is talking about the former.
    - colpabar 5y ago
      Is there a difference? I have used grindr, and if someone is close enough, it will say they are "x feet away." They are well aware of the precision of the location data they serve to users, because it's a feature.
      - tyingq 5y ago
        It may not be clear to end users that anyone, anywhere, can pull location data for everyone with not a lot of effort.
heavyset_go 5y ago
They don't care to do anything about it, either. Trilateration on Grindr was demonstrated by Wired in 2016[1]. They also don't care when their app facilitates harassment and puts innocent people at risk[2], and they're willing to go to the Supreme Court[3] in order to defend their right to do absolutely nothing about it. [1] https://www.wired.com/2016/05/grindr-promises-privacy-still-leaks-exact-location/ https://www.wired.com/2016/05/grindr-promises-privacy-still-... [2] https://www.lawfareblog.com/herrick-v-grindr-why-section-230-communications-decency-act-must-be-fixed https://www.lawfareblog.com/herrick-v-grindr-why-section-230... [3] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/publications/perspectives/2021/december/winning-through-losing/ https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/publicati...
- gjsman-1000 5y ago
  Whenever an app does stuff like that, you can't shake the feeling that that app might be a front for somebody. The FBI made fake anonymous phones. No reason an anti-LGBT organization or government couldn't make a Gay Dating app. Remember that Grindr is majority owned by Beijing Kunlun Tech, a Chinese company. And China isn't the most Gay-friendly nation now is it...
  - notduncansmith 5y ago
    Surprised this comment isn’t higher up
  - heavyset_go 5y ago
    I have similar feelings. I've never seen a company burn so much goodwill for essentially nothing.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  > It all began when my client, Matthew Herrick, a waiter-actor-model, exercised his right to leave an abusive and controlling relationship. His ex retaliated by impersonating Matthew on the gay dating app Grindr. Using Matthew’s picture and name, the ex would say Matthew had rape fantasies and then directly message with men to set up sex dates. Grindr’s patented geo-locating technology resulted in stranger after stranger going to Matthew’s home and the restaurant where he worked expecting sex. Some days, Matthew had as many as 23 visitors. > By the time Matthew arrived at my office, exhausted and traumatized, he had already gotten an order of protection and reported the matter to the police 10 times. Yet, the flow of strangers—over a thousand at that point—wasn’t slowing. The unwitting strangers would wait for him in the stairwells at home, other times following him into the bathroom at work. “What about Grindr?” I asked. “They’re in the exclusive position to help.” Matthew said he had reported the matter to them 50 times. If I ran a dating site, I'd jump all over this. Sure it's the right thing to do, but even from a business perspective having your platform appear to be a safe place would be important for gaining new members. If this account is remotely accurate I can't think of an explanation for this other than colossal incompetence or evil.
zeteo 5y ago
By most definitions you would find that the Catholic Church in its current form is an oppressive regime. It definitely takes a lot of courage for a gay man to become a priest in such an organization.
- lurquer 5y ago
  What is so courageous about violating one’s oaths? If you want to go to gay bars and pick up guys on Grindr, leave the priesthood. If you want to be celibate and follow church teachings, quit going to gay bars. But, there’s nothing ‘courageous’ about trying to have your cake and eat it too.
  - mikem170 5y ago
    Doesn't the church teach that we are all born sinners (original sin), meaning that nobody is perfect, but that one can confess their sins, repent, and be forgiven? Doesn't that apply to priests, also? Or do they loose their priesthood if they sin? Have they treated gay priests differently than child abusing priests?
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      Priests go to confession, but they are also held to a higher standard. Not being Catholic, I don't know where the lines are as far as sin that would get a priest defrocked.
      - lurquer 5y ago
        They are not held to a higher standard. But, they have certain rules they are to follow if they wish to be a priest. If you swear to follow the rules, you should do so. If not, quit. It had nothing to do with Catholicism. If you’re a Rabbi leading a synagogue you shouldn’t sneak off on the Sabbath and gorge on pork sandwiches. Nobody would call such a Rabbi ‘courageous.’ They’d call him a hypocrite. Hell, it doesn’t even have to do with religion. If your job prohibits you from smoking marijuana, and you swear you won’t, nobody should call you ‘courageous’ if you’re busted smoking weed.

jacquesm 5y ago

Smartphones are dangerous in some contexts.

CamperBob2 5y ago
Then again, many powerful tools are.
- ashtonkem 5y ago
  Most dangerous tools are predictable in their danger. Take firearms; modern firearms are reliable[0] and tend to do exactly what their current handler intends. You would not for example expect your firearm to leave its case in the middle of the night and blow your windows out, for example. Smart phones are unpredictable in their danger. You would not expect Grindr to sell you out to an oppressive regime, for example. Nor would you expect your private dating profile to get you fired. These are unpredictable outcomes well outside the range of what most users would expect. 0 - Truly accidental discharges where the firearm goes off without a trigger press are rare and make the news. Most negligent discharges are the result of people mishandling the firearm, rather than the firearm doing something unexpected.
  - phkahler 5y ago
    >> Nor would you expect your private dating profile to get you fired. I think the mistake is thinking those profiles are private. How could you ever meet someone without some ability for people to see your profile? I've never tried any dating sites, so may be overlooking something obvious to others.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      There’s an expectation that that information is compartmentalized somehow, a bit like how everyone at a gay bar can see you there but only the people at the gay bar can see you.
      - throwawayboise 5y ago
        Nothing on social media, or really any online service, should ever be considered private. It may claim to be, but ultimately it's not in your control.
        mPReDiToR 5y ago
        I've been telling my friends/family/anyone who will listen for two decades plus that anything you type into a computer is probably public now, or will be one day. Never type anything you wouldn't want to be taken out of context and read out in court, either a law court, or the court of public opinion.
        ashtonkem 5y ago
        That’s factually true, but: 1) That’s not what people expect. 2) There is an argument that it shouldn’t be this way.
  - dmos62 5y ago
    You could say that giving an untrusted app privileges is like giving a gun to someone you don't know.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      I don’t disagree, it just doesn’t seem like that is what most people think.
      - dmos62 5y ago
        I blame UX design, personally. Trying to make everything conceptually trivial made interfaces that glossed over a lot of important details. I'm all for simplicity, but this is shoving complexity under the carpet.
  - agys 5y ago
    Unrelated to main topic, but a case exactly as described by you made the news yesterday in Italy: a man accidentally firing a gun after falling down (accidental trigger press or not is still investigated) [Article in Italian]. https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/07/21/news/voghera_assessore_leghista_spara_e_uccide_un_uomo_dopo_una_lite_in_piazza-311209068 https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2021/07/21/news/voghera_as...
    - dogorman 5y ago
      > (accidental trigger press or not is still investigated) It seems like a moot distinction to me. Take Glock for example; they make a big deal about their guns having "three automatic independently-operating mechanical safeties." But the fact of the matter is a glock has no traditional fire/safe toggle safety. ALL the safety of a glock is based on the premise that the trigger will not be unintentionally pulled when a round is in the chamber. The obvious consequence of this is people getting shot by completely accidental trigger pulls. Whether you drop the gun and it goes off or the trigger snags on your clothing and the gun goes off, a gunshot accident is still a gunshot accident, and both are consequences of the gun's design.
      - ashtonkem 5y ago
        Glocks are still not unpredictable by my metric. Yes, the margins of safety might be narrower than you’d prefer, but it’s not going to go bang without a trigger press. It’s a very predictable firearm in that way. That being said the first generation was prone to slam fires, where chambering a round sets the firearm off. Now that is an unpredictable tool. Also, historically snagging the trigger on clothing has always been a source of negligent discharges, even before Gaston Glock was around. The allied army in WW2 officially required that most soldiers issued a handgun carry it with an empty chamber due to the prevalence of injuries, and the M1911 has a grip and manual safety.
        dogorman 5y ago
        I think you've missed my point, > Glocks are still not unpredictable by my metric. [...] it’s not going to go bang without a trigger press. It’s a very predictable firearm in that way. I agree with this completely. Glocks are predictable. Where we part ways is that I don't believe predictability is the metric that should be optimized for. People not getting shot is the important metric; predictability is only important insofar as it relates to that. But as demonstrated by glocks, predictability is not the end-all-be-all when it comes to people not accidentally shooting themselves. As for soldiers in WWII, they also had piss-poor to non-existent trigger discipline. A 1911 is a safer gun than a glock due to the manual safety, but still won't protect you from handling it in unsafe ways. Glocks have that same problem, but worse because they lack manual safeties which function as one last line of defense when you fuck up everything else.

tyingq 5y ago

The triangulation thing using Grindr's private api is pretty bad. I'm surprised Grindr doesn't "fuzz" the location enough to at least make it much less accurate.

azinman2 5y ago
That'd be a nice option, but limits the use case.
colpabar 5y ago
>I'm surprised Grindr doesn't "fuzz" the location enough to at least make it much less accurate. Why would they? Doing that would make their data less valuable. Just because grindr is the "gay hookup app" doesn't necessarily mean that the people who operate it care about gay people's (or anyone's) privacy. According to this [0], grindr ranks #4 of all mobile apps when it comes to collecting personal information. It's a free app that requires your location to use it, which means that it's a personal info collection app first, and a dating app second. [0]: https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/data-grabbing-apps/762166/ https://www.komando.com/security-privacy/data-grabbing-apps/...
- aqme28 5y ago
  There's a difference between the location data Grindr serves to its users and the location data they acquire to use internally. You're talking about the latter, but OP is talking about the former.
  - colpabar 5y ago
    Is there a difference? I have used grindr, and if someone is close enough, it will say they are "x feet away." They are well aware of the precision of the location data they serve to users, because it's a feature.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      It may not be clear to end users that anyone, anywhere, can pull location data for everyone with not a lot of effort.

heavyset_go 5y ago

They don't care to do anything about it, either. Trilateration on Grindr was demonstrated by Wired in 2016[1]. They also don't care when their app facilitates harassment and puts innocent people at risk[2], and they're willing to go to the Supreme Court[3] in order to defend their right to do absolutely nothing about it. [1] https://www.wired.com/2016/05/grindr-promises-privacy-still-leaks-exact-location/ https://www.wired.com/2016/05/grindr-promises-privacy-still-... [2] https://www.lawfareblog.com/herrick-v-grindr-why-section-230-communications-decency-act-must-be-fixed https://www.lawfareblog.com/herrick-v-grindr-why-section-230... [3] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/publications/perspectives/2021/december/winning-through-losing/ https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/publicati...

gjsman-1000 5y ago
Whenever an app does stuff like that, you can't shake the feeling that that app might be a front for somebody. The FBI made fake anonymous phones. No reason an anti-LGBT organization or government couldn't make a Gay Dating app. Remember that Grindr is majority owned by Beijing Kunlun Tech, a Chinese company. And China isn't the most Gay-friendly nation now is it...
- notduncansmith 5y ago
  Surprised this comment isn’t higher up
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  I have similar feelings. I've never seen a company burn so much goodwill for essentially nothing.
willcipriano 5y ago
> It all began when my client, Matthew Herrick, a waiter-actor-model, exercised his right to leave an abusive and controlling relationship. His ex retaliated by impersonating Matthew on the gay dating app Grindr. Using Matthew’s picture and name, the ex would say Matthew had rape fantasies and then directly message with men to set up sex dates. Grindr’s patented geo-locating technology resulted in stranger after stranger going to Matthew’s home and the restaurant where he worked expecting sex. Some days, Matthew had as many as 23 visitors. > By the time Matthew arrived at my office, exhausted and traumatized, he had already gotten an order of protection and reported the matter to the police 10 times. Yet, the flow of strangers—over a thousand at that point—wasn’t slowing. The unwitting strangers would wait for him in the stairwells at home, other times following him into the bathroom at work. “What about Grindr?” I asked. “They’re in the exclusive position to help.” Matthew said he had reported the matter to them 50 times. If I ran a dating site, I'd jump all over this. Sure it's the right thing to do, but even from a business perspective having your platform appear to be a safe place would be important for gaining new members. If this account is remotely accurate I can't think of an explanation for this other than colossal incompetence or evil.

zeteo 5y ago

By most definitions you would find that the Catholic Church in its current form is an oppressive regime. It definitely takes a lot of courage for a gay man to become a priest in such an organization.

lurquer 5y ago
What is so courageous about violating one’s oaths? If you want to go to gay bars and pick up guys on Grindr, leave the priesthood. If you want to be celibate and follow church teachings, quit going to gay bars. But, there’s nothing ‘courageous’ about trying to have your cake and eat it too.
- mikem170 5y ago
  Doesn't the church teach that we are all born sinners (original sin), meaning that nobody is perfect, but that one can confess their sins, repent, and be forgiven? Doesn't that apply to priests, also? Or do they loose their priesthood if they sin? Have they treated gay priests differently than child abusing priests?
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    Priests go to confession, but they are also held to a higher standard. Not being Catholic, I don't know where the lines are as far as sin that would get a priest defrocked.
    - lurquer 5y ago
      They are not held to a higher standard. But, they have certain rules they are to follow if they wish to be a priest. If you swear to follow the rules, you should do so. If not, quit. It had nothing to do with Catholicism. If you’re a Rabbi leading a synagogue you shouldn’t sneak off on the Sabbath and gorge on pork sandwiches. Nobody would call such a Rabbi ‘courageous.’ They’d call him a hypocrite. Hell, it doesn’t even have to do with religion. If your job prohibits you from smoking marijuana, and you swear you won’t, nobody should call you ‘courageous’ if you’re busted smoking weed.