Grindr Disables Location Services in Olympic Village – NBC4 Washington

Grindr has introduced a series of enhanced privacy safeguards at the Paris Olympic Village to protect LGBTQ athletes using the popular gay dating app.

Earlier this week, some Grindr users reported on social media that the app appeared to be blocked in the Olympic Village because they couldn’t use the “Explore” feature, which lets you search and browse profiles in a specific location, NBC News reported.

Then on Wednesday, Grindr confirmed it would be turning off location-based app features, something it also did during the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, and also introduced a number of other enhanced privacy measures.

“If an athlete is not open about their orientation or is from a country where being LGBTQ+ is unsafe or illegal, using Grindr may put them at risk of being outed by curious individuals who may try to identify them and out them on the app,” Grindr wrote in a blog post.

According to Human Rights Watch, at least 67 countries have laws criminalizing same-sex relations between consenting adults.

Without location-based services, Grindr users won’t be able to use the “explore,” “hike,” or “show distance” features in the Olympic Village. However, users can share their approximate distance if they choose to enable it.

“Our goal is to help athletes connect without the fear of accidentally revealing their location or being recognized,” Grinder wrote in his Wednesday post.

Among other additional safety features, the app will allow users in the Olympic Village to send unlimited disappearing messages and undo messages, regardless of whether they are premium or free users. It will also disable private videos in the Olympic Village and allow users to disable screenshots for profile photos and direct messages, as well as send targeted safety resources and information, such as weekly “messages reminding users that they may be at risk when using the app in the Olympic Village and providing links to our multilingual safety resources,” the blog post said.

Some social media users have noted that Grindr has been used in the past to expose the orientation of Olympic athletes, referencing a widely criticized Daily Beast article in which a reporter who noted that he identifies as heterosexual used the app during the 2016 Rio Olympics.

The original version of the article contained potentially identifying information about some of the athletes the reporter had “matched” with. After intense backlash, The Daily Beast edited the article to remove the identifying information, but ultimately removed the article and replaced it with an editor’s note that included an apology to “athletes who may have been unwittingly compromised by our story.”

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