Grindr explains why it disabled location features in the Olympic Village
Thomas Trutschel/Photothek via Getty Images
- Grindr will disable location features within the Olympic Village to protect LGBTQ+ athletes' safety.
- Past incidents at the 2016 and 2020 Olympics exposed LGBTQ+ athletes to potential harm.
- Grindr adds privacy features like unlimited disappearing messages for extra security.
While Olympians are known to participate in other athletic activities in their downtime, athletes in Paris might find their Grindr more restricted than usual.
And no, it's not about preventing the athletes from having sex — it's actually a safety precaution.
"If athletes are not out or come from a country where being LGBTQ+ is dangerous or illegal, using Grindr can put them at risk," Grinder wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
The company decided to disable location-based features like "Explore" and "Roam" within the Olympic Village to prevent athletes from unintentionally revealing their whereabouts or being recognized and potentially outed.
Grindr wrote in a blog post that additional privacy and safety features will also be enabled for Olympians, including unlimited disappearing messages, unlimited ability to unsend messages, and disabling private videos and screenshots of profile images and media in chat.
The dating app's protective measures are for good reason. In 2016, US news website The Daily Beast apologized after it nearly outed several gay Olympians using Grindr to identify them, including one from a "notoriously homophobic country," the original article said.
LGBTQ+ athletes were once again at risk during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, which were postponed to 2021, where several TikTok users posted videos with the names and pictures of Olympians' Grindr profiles, Business Insider previously reported.
With some athletes hailing from countries where homosexuality remains a crime, Grindr implemented safety measures the following year for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.
From dating apps to Airbnb's, Grindr is just another example of how it's not always business as usual for companies operating services when the Olympics comes to town.