Grindr Launches Anti-Discrimination ‘Kindr’ Initiative

Grindr has today launched its ‘Kindr’ initiative, designed to make the platform more inclusive and welcoming.

Kindr features new community guidelines and stricter sanctions for bad behaviour, as well as an awareness campaign informing users about in-app discrimination.

“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.”

The awareness campaign features a video of Grindr users discussing some of the behaviour they have witnessed on the app.

The new guidelines read:

• • 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.

• • 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 (“No fats, no fems, no Asians”) will no longer be tolerated and will be subject to review by our moderation team.

• If you see someone breaking the rules, please report them using the block button found in the upper right corner of their profile, and 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.

Read more here.