It is the largest queer social net­work in the world, with around four mil­lion dai­ly users in . It used the i Phone’s geolo­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy to become the first dat­ing app that could find match­es based on prox­im­i­ty, paving the way for Tin­der and Bum­ble years lat­er.It was like a real-life gay­dar, which could reveal queer peo­ple in a social envi­ron­ment where they may still feel com­pelled to hide them­selves. There are many pos­si­ble uses for Grindr: mak­ing friends, look­ing for rela­tion­ships, find­ing pho­tog­ra­phy sub­jects – but most­ly it’s about sex.

Grindr’s defence in the Her­rick case was that it doesn’t ask for per­son­al details, mak­ing it hard to crack down on an indi­vid­ual user.Grindr offers dis­trac­tion, a tem­po­rary balm for anx­i­ety and lone­li­ness, but I won­der if it might also pla­cate peo­ple, so they nev­er exam­ine why they feel those things in the first place.