Grindr banned in the Olympic Village in Paris (2024)

[brnbk]

Grindr has decided to make its geolocation services unavailable in the Olympics Village, and ban it for the Olympics currently behind held in Paris. China banned Grindr from its Olympic village in 2022, and oddly Paris has bought into Grindr's claim that the decision was taken  to protect gays. 

Do gay sportsmen need protection from Grindr hookups in the Olympic Village or are they capable of taking care of themselves and have gay fun. Is this decision homophobic?

[think before following links] https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/07/23/paris-olympics-grindr-profiles/

[think before following links] https://www.outsports.com/2024/7/23/24098046/grindr-gay-olympic-village-blocked/#:~:text=“Grindr imposed the same restriction,one another while they're

Yahoo : Grindr says no peeking!

[ellentonboy]

I just think geo locators, on any site, are problematic.  I have posted on this subject previously that people have identified where I lived and knocked on my door, or worse yet, my neighbor's door.  I don't use geo locators for that reason.

When it comes to the Olympics, I can see just how this could be an issue.  What if an athlete is not out to his team mates, or does not want it to be known that he is looking for sex.  I know they are giving out condoms and that sex is not banned in the Olympic village, yet athletes who are adults are not allowed to consume alcohol.  I can't imagine a country or an individual, who just won a medal, would not want to have a celebratory beer, glass of win or champagne.  I have read that Team USA is being held to a "dry" criteria through the length of the Olympics.  So a 30 year old guy can't have a beer after he won a medal?  That strikes me as a bit controlling.

But when it comes to the geo locator for Grindr at the Olympics, I agree that it does protect athletes.  They are not banning the app, just that one part of it.  I think that is the right move.

[viking8x6]

There's no profit to Grindr in doing that for homophobic reasons. They're not banning the app, just turning off geolocation. Yes, "for safety", but from a business point of view it's very likely they're doing it for reasons of potential liability.

[Theo8]

On 7/24/2024 at 1:52 PM, brnbk said:

Grindr has decided to make its geolocation services unavailable in the Olympics Village, and ban it for the Olympics currently behind held in Paris. China banned Grindr from its Olympic village in 2022, and oddly Paris has bought into Grindr's claim that the decision was taken  to protect gays. 

Do gay sportsmen need protection from Grindr hookups in the Olympic Village or are they capable of taking care of themselves and have gay fun. Is this decision homophobic?

[think before following links] [think before following links] https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/07/23/paris-olympics-grindr-profiles/

[think before following links] [think before following links] https://www.outsports.com/2024/7/23/24098046/grindr-gay-olympic-village-blocked/#:~:text=“Grindr imposed the same restriction,one another while they're

Yahoo : Grindr says no peeking!

gay sportsmen from homophobic countries do; I think journalists were able to out gay athletes in Rio from homophobic countries due to their profiles on Grindr.  

[brnbk]

On 7/24/2024 at 3:04 PM, ellentonboy said:

..............  So a 30 year old guy can't have a beer after he won a medal?  That strikes me as a bit controlling.

But when it comes to the geo locator for Grindr at the Olympics, I agree that it does protect athletes.  They are not banning the app, just that one part of it.  I think that is the right move.

Isn't the ban of geo-location controlling as well? After all, athletes have the option  not to log into Grindr or app or turn of geo-location, should they choose. 

 

On 7/25/2024 at 7:00 PM, Theo8 said:

gay sportsmen from homophobic countries do; I think journalists were able to out gay athletes in Rio from homophobic countries due to their profiles on Grindr.  

I am imagining if the guy is on Grindr in the Olympics!, he probably is on Grindr even when he is back in his homophobic country; and every gay man including gay athletes in homophobic countries, unfortunately, has the border and duty to fight the fight against homophobia! homophobia cannot be eliminated by doing away with a gay app or gay bar. Such a line of reasoning is circular, and seeks to blame and eliminate the victim rather than the perpetrator. 

 

 

On 7/24/2024 at 4:26 PM, viking8x6 said:

There's no profit to Grindr in doing that for homophobic reasons. They're not banning the app, just turning off geolocation. Yes, "for safety", but from a business point of view it's very likely they're doing it for reasons of potential liability.

Whose safety: Is Grindr really worried about the safety of gay athletes or is it more worried about the safety of its profits and intersectionality with the straight world? What I mean by that phrase is, the ability of Grindr to appear "normal" as defined by the heteronormative standards of the society in which it operates. According to multiple news sources, the Olympic village does not allow the family of athletes to stay with them, thus leaving a host of testosterones filled men with urges - cum filled balls desperate to drain it in a hole, any hole if they become desperate. Is fear of homosexual experimentation on part of the Olympians one of the main driving force behind this decision to ban GPS, as geolocation certainly makes a hook up easy: if I know how far the gay guy is, its easy to talk to him and perhaps arrange for a meeting -  cum filled encounter of Olympic proportions? 

 

 

[topblkmale]

 

What technology is Grindr using to ban geo-location? Seems they're doing what's done in some Muslim countries.

Very easy workaround is a VPN and Chinese geo-location spoofing software.

 

P.S. That opening ceremony was whack!

 

Edited July 27 by topblkmale

[viking8x6]

1 hour ago, brnbk said:

Is fear of homosexual experimentation on part of the Olympians one of the main driving force behind this decision to ban GPS, as geolocation certainly makes a hook up easy: if I know how far the gay guy is, its easy to talk to him and perhaps arrange for a meeting -  cum filled encounter of Olympic proportions?

I honestly doubt it. My reasoning is that the operative word here is "village" - if an athlete sees someone on Grindr and is interested, all they need do is discuss a meeting location, without reference to GPS. It's not like the distance would be great or that there aren't more than plenty of landmarks. Further, given that Paris is a large metro area, anyone visible online would of necessity be within a relatively short geographic distance - they show (more or less, with dither to prevent identification) the nearest few dozen or few hundred people, and in a place with the Grindr-using population of Paris that won't take you far.

[ellentonboy]

From what I read, and of course that could me FALSE NEWS, but Grindr is not banned in the Olympic Village.  What is banned in the geo locator to give athletes privacy.  Many of these athletes come from nations where homosexuality is frowned on, or even outlawed.  So no one wants to have their identify revealed by a geo locator.

The way I look at it, hats off to Grindr (for once) making a decision that will actually benefit it's subscribers.  I have been the recipient of individuals knocking on my door at 2 am when I forgot to turn the damn thing off, I can't imagine competing for an Olympic medal and having some random guy knock on my door looking for head.  

I think they did the right thing, at least in imho.

[viking8x6]

Perhaps we could get an update from a BZ member who happens to be on the ground in Paris this week?

[brnbk]

1 hour ago, viking8x6 said:

 if an athlete sees someone on Grindr and is interested, all they need do is discuss a meeting location, without reference to GPS. It's not like the distance would be great or that there aren't more than plenty of landmarks..

If you are a straight guy, horny as hell, with no prior experience of Grindr — An app which tell u how far the nearest booty is more likely to make you reach out for a Quickie rather than one where u go and find 100s of guys in the city: with no idea of who is close by and within 10-15 mts of a real, quick fuck! Geo location makes hookups easy and it should be up to the athletes to decide if they want to use it or not — not Grindr!

Advertisers understand the importance of this principle of ease and visibility and that is why will place products near a check out line, so that the products catch shoppers' attention and they end up indulging in an impulse buy. 

The Olympic village may be saving the soul of a "weak man" who might fall prey to their homosexual impulse or lusts by removing his occasion/situation of sin, but why is Grindr facilitating this disservice to gay athletes? I imagine, if I where a gay Olympian I would definitely be wanting to have a good fuck the day before the big match and would be motivated by knowing I would have a good fuck after the match. 

 

On 7/24/2024 at 4:26 PM, viking8x6 said:

There's no profit to Grindr in............................................ it's very likely they're doing it for reasons of potential liability.

I am wondering if they are doing it to avoid any kind of lawsuit by the wife of a 'straight' guy who ends up having a homosexual encounter in the gay village, the wife blaming it on the fact that family members are not allowed in the gay village, a fact confirmed by multiple news articles. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Cosmopolitan

 Technically, only athletes competing in the games are allowed to stay in the Olympic Village—but they can bring their coaches and sport specific team officials around if needed.

[think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] https://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/celebs/a61647461/olympic-village-rules/

Only athletes, trainers and officials are allowed to room at the Village, though family members and former Olympic athletes are allowed inside with proper checks. Press and media are also barred.

[think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympic_Village

 

Edited July 27 by brnbk
ingrained bad habit

[BergenGuy]

19 hours ago, ellentonboy said:

From what I read, and of course that could me FALSE NEWS, but Grindr is not banned in the Olympic Village.  What is banned in the geo locator to give athletes privacy.  Many of these athletes come from nations where homosexuality is frowned on, or even outlawed.  So no one wants to have their identify revealed by a geo locator.

The way I look at it, hats off to Grindr (for once) making a decision that will actually benefit it's subscribers.  I have been the recipient of individuals knocking on my door at 2 am when I forgot to turn the damn thing off, I can't imagine competing for an Olympic medal and having some random guy knock on my door looking for head.  

I think that it could be argued that if an athlete wants privacy, that individual can just turn off geolocation on their account.  There is no reason to ban that feature for every athlete.  That comes across as very paternalistic.  Why should everyone lose that feature because some athletes come from LGBT-hostile cultures?

Now, on the other hand, if Grindr has legitimate liability concerns (I'm not sure what those would be) then it should turn off the service.  It is a business, after all.  

Personally, I won't interact with guys on Grindr who don't have their distance turned on (unless I can see them in my grid).  There are just too many cat fishers out there.  Even guys with distance turned on can be cat fishers, but in my experience it is a much smaller percentage than those who are hiding their distance.

[blackrobe]

TL;DR: Not a ban, not homophobic, and not the whole story.

I have lots of problems with Grinder, from its technology, to its ethics and business practices. The temporary and geofenced changes they've made at the Olympic Village in Paris aren't among those problems.

Firstly, I don't think anyone could convince me that Grindr or the French are sex-negative or homophobic, but secondly the history of Grindr and other location-based hook up apps at the Olympics and other International events give a pretty clear context and justification for their actions.

In 2016, a 'writer' and editor for The Daily Beast, Nico Hines, wrote a click-bait story that outed gay athletes at the Rio Olympics causing an uproar that earned him Internet infamy as the epitome of the self-serving and amoral journalist. Hines, who is straight, set up a bogus profile on Grindr and used it to trick Olympic athletes into chatting with him. He didn't identify himself as a journalist unless he was challenged, and his sex-negative and shaming article described the athletes he spoke to in enough detail that it was very easy to identify them. Some of the outed athletes were from extremely anti-gay countries, meaning that Hines’ irresponsible piece put them at risk when they returned home.

Hines used the location-based features we're discussing to explore inside the 2016 Olympic Village and find the athletes he ultimately exploited and potentially endangered in his story. The uproar of condemnation that met his article resulted in The Daily Beast very quickly stripping out the identifying information, but even with the details removed the furor continued and the article was taken down completely. At the time I remember thinking, "Why is a straight guy writing about gay hookups at the Olympics rather than the overwhelmingly more numerous straight hookups? I guess there's no clicks in outing straight folks..." 

Then at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, TikTok and Twitter users decided that using the same features and method to find gay athletes was a great way to "create content" in the form of screenshots and screen recordings of athletes on Grindr. The same furor arose for the same reasons and TikTok and Twitter took down the exploitative content at Grindr's request.

Grindr had found themselves in multiple PR fires at multiple Olympics being used as kind of digital accessory to outing and endangering athletes. Is it any wonder they finally sat down in the wake of this high-profile negative press to find a way to protect athletes and prevent people doing the same thing at future Olympics? In 2016 I'm pretty sure they thought the Olympics PR problem needed a PR solution, but after 2020 they realized they would need a combined PR and technology solution going forward. 

Here's what Grindr says they are doing at the 2024 Paris Olympics to mitigate past problems and give athletes the safest experience possible (Source: Grindr and Enhanced Privacy for Athletes at the Paris Olympics, July 24th 2024):

 

Quote

• Disabling Location-Based Features 
  • We're turning off features like "Explore" and "Roam" within the Olympic Village. The "show distance" feature will also be turned off by default, but users can share their approximate distance if they decide to turn it on. Our goal is to help athletes connect without worrying about unintentionally revealing their whereabouts or being recognized.
• Empowering Users with Control 
  • Here are some of the additional safety and privacy features we’ll be enabling for users in the Olympic Village to give them more privacy controls and peace of mind:
    • Send unlimited disappearing messages and unsend messages after they're sent—regardless of whether you’re a premium or free user. 
    • Disable screenshots for profile images and media in-chat.
    • Private Videos are disabled within the Olympic Village.
    • Access the ‘Report a Recent Chat’ feature in Settings to report any concerns within 24 hours, along with our other enhanced security features. We protect your privacy by keeping user details confidential (profile names and photos are obscured).
• Providing Targeted Safety Resources 
  • Being an LGBTQ+ athlete comes with its own unique set of challenges, especially for those who come from places that lack basic rights and protections for our community.
  • That’s why we’re taking the additional step of sending targeted safety resources and information, including weekly messages reminding users that they may face danger while using the app in the Olympic Village and sharing links to our multilingual safety resources.
• Showcasing Our Values 
  • The only ads that will appear on Grindr to those in the village during the Olympics will be advertisements from Grindr for Equality promoting health & safety resources. You won't see third-party advertisements—only Grindr for Equality public service announcements to help keep users informed and safe.

 

 

I don't see anything that could be framed as a "Grindr ban" in these steps. What I do see is a company trying to figure out how to prevent bad actors (yes, Nico Hines and those specific TikTok and Twitter users, I mean you) from using their platform to breach a high-profile group of users privacy and safety. 

Looking at the history, any suggestion that Grindr's actions for the Paris Olympics are "homophobic" is nonsensical to me. Positioning it as a kind of "ban" is, at the very least, uninformed, if not actually intentionally misleading. I can only assume that the OP was themselves the victim of some lazy or sensationalized reporting to frame the survey question as they did.

I'd assert instead that Grindr has credibly attempted to thread the needle on preserving capabilities for athletes in the Olympic village while protecting them from those bad actors outside the village trying to monetize the athletes sexuality at the expense of their privacy and safety.

[brnbk]

On 7/28/2024 at 3:14 PM, blackrobe said:

being used as kind of digital accessory to outing and endangering athletes.............Looking at the history, any suggestion that Grindr's actions for the Paris Olympics are "homophobic" is nonsensical to me. Positioning it as a kind of "ban" is, at the very least, uninformed, if not actually intentionally misleading.

Grindr's actions have always been rather self serving with no consideration of gay interests.  The rising legal cases against them including the one brought by a gay priest in the US whose data it sold to right wing anti gay religious homophobes, or the gay men in the UK whose HIV status it again sold to third party commercial companies are good examples of how  'gay-friendly' they reallyt are.  Oh, and I forgot the gay marriage position of its former CEO, but i guess Grindr's anti gay history calls for another thread altogether and I am going to try to sick to the present issue. 
 

To get the facts right about this particular event: Grindr and the Olympic Village, Grind  came clean about the issue only after gay athletes started complaining on Social media that they couldn’t use the “explore” function, which allows users to search for and view profiles in a specific location. Thus if any  guy went on Grindr in the Olympic villages and did an explore function, he should have ordinarily been able to see at least how many gay male athletes exist in the world and thus register homosexual presence in the Olympics. By disbanding this, Grindr is effectively reducing gay visibility. 

“If an athlete is not out or comes from a country where being LGBTQ+ is dangerous or illegal, using Grindr can put them at risk of being outed by curious individuals who may try to identify and expose them on the app,” Grindr said in a blog post

[think before following links] https://www.grindr.com/blog/grindr-and-enhanced-privacy-for-athletes-at-the-paris-olympics

Claiming that guys from countries with homophobic laws need to be protected from hook-ups, laws which where put there by the white colonial masters in the first place,  is very patronizing to say the least, and reeks of a total ignorance of gays outside of the United States and the gay rights movement across the globe. So many countries with anti gay laws have actively been removing anti sodomy laws from their legal statues and lot of this came about because gay men and women sought to escape from their homophobic countries and would try to live a gay life elsewhere. In the States, for e.g. a lot of your gay artists and intellectuals, such as Gore Vidal, Edward White, Gertrude Stein etc  went to Paris during the Pre War Era to enjoy the freedoms that they did not enjoy back in the United States. If there is a gay athlete say from Quarter, a middle eastern Muslim country, and this is the only time in his life he gets to be outside of his country and  where he can be gay, shouldn't Grindr be making life easy for him by facilitating a hook-up for him, instead of trying to prevent it? .  I couldn't help but think of this inspiring gay guy, Dr Nas Mohammed, and how he managed to escape from an oppressive situation and live his authentic truth. 

 

 

 

I noticed you never commented on my main observation that Grindr did this because it didn't want to be seeing facilitating possible same-sex sexual activity in an environment where wife's of athlete's are banned and thus opportunity for same-sex sexual activity increases. I am sure it wasn't laziness on your part or any kind of intentional oversight, and I am truly interested in hearing what you have to say of it. 

 

On 7/28/2024 at 3:14 PM, blackrobe said:

I don't see anything that could be framed as a "Grindr ban" in these steps. What I do see is a company trying to figure out how to prevent bad actors (yes, Nico Hines and those specific TikTok and Twitter users, I mean you) from using their platform to breach a high-profile group of users privacy and safety. 

How far can we take this protecting 'high profile users' from bad actors experiment. The next thing we will know is gay bars in Paris banning people from countries where being gay is dangerous/illegal for fear that they could become victims of a potential Outing attempt. 

 

[blackrobe]

Grindr is a for-profit company, of course its actions will be self-serving.

Attempting to blunt and manage to neutral the PR problems it saw at the last two Olympics was about protecting its brand and stock price. I'm critical of Grindr on many issues, but there is nothing surprising or sinister in their actions on this issue. I've worked in technology and been part of team dealing with PR issues. Based on my experience, this looks like business as usual.

13 minutes ago, brnbk said:

I noticed you never commented on my main observation that Grindr did this because it didn't want to be seeing facilitating possible same-sex sexual activity in an environment where wife's of athlete's are banned and thus opportunity for same-sex sexual activity increases. I am sure it wasn't laziness on your part or any kind of intentional oversight, and I am truly interested in hearing what you have to say of it. 

My lack of comment on the above mentioned hypothesis was quite intentional. 

[brnbk]

19 hours ago, blackrobe said:

 I've worked in technology and been part of team dealing with PR issues.

I am very surprised that someone who worked/works for Grindr would defend its policies!

Back in September last year, at least 50 % of Grindr workforce QUIT over its return to office policies and forced relocation. Grindr seems to  creates a fairly toxic place not just in the outside world of Olympics but also internally in its Office!! 

[think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/dating-app-grindr-loses-nearly-half-its-staff-after-trying-to-force-a-return-to-office-1.6553414

 

19 hours ago, blackrobe said:

My lack of comment on the above mentioned hypothesis was quite intentional. 

Which is only puzzling.. as homophobia and hetro-normative structures are not just a hypothesis but a lived reality of gay people and needs to be recognized and called out wherever it shows up. Is it really that hard to conceive, within the realm of possibility, that the powers that be: foreseeing possible same-sex activity in a village filled  with men athletes (and women) who are away from their straight spouses for a week or two, do not want any easy same-sex hook up technology accessible in that village space and prefer having it blocked?

 

On 7/28/2024 at 3:14 PM, blackrobe said:

In 2016, a 'writer' and editor for The Daily Beast, Nico Hines, wrote a click-bait story that outed gay athletes at the Rio Olympics causing an uproar that earned him Internet infamy as the epitome of the self-serving and amoral journalist.........................................

Then at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, TikTok and Twitter users decided that using the same features and method to find gay athletes was a great way to "create content" in the form of screenshots and screen recordings of athletes on Grindr. The same furor arose for the same reasons and TikTok and Twitter took down the exploitative content at Grindr's request.

Thank you for filling in on the background events and context and I am so happy that TikTok and Twitter did take down this illegal content. There is always going to be content that is illegal, e.g. someone recording someone in a public bathroom, and internet companies will have to take a decision/have some kind of guidelines on how to deal with it: take it down, report it etc. However, we can't stop public posting of videos simply because someone might and someone  quite likely will post illegal videos. Similarly, Grindr does not need to take the Orwellian decission of turning off geolocation and Search/Explore services altogether, and instead could do something it does in high risk(for gays) countries like Egypt for e.g. where users often see a warning before opening the app, that they could be monitored or become victims of some kind of surveillance. 

[think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/24/grindr-egypt-police-fake-accounts/

 

On 7/28/2024 at 12:00 PM, BergenGuy said:

Now, on the other hand, if Grindr has legitimate liability concerns (I'm not sure what those would be) then it should turn off the service.  It is a business, after all.  

The only liability that Grindr has is its own conservative mindset! After all one of its CEO was defending the sanctity of heterosexual marriage! (2018) and the present one was promoting an anti gay Virginia Governor, Glenn Youngkin, who rolled back LGBTQ rights for kids, as President. 

[think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/29/grindr-apps-president-calls-marriage-holy-matrimony-between-man-and-woman

[think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] [think before following links] https://time.com/6221545/grindr-ceo-george-arison-tweet-conservative-politicians/

People who come from anti-gay countries are not likely to sue Grindr for fear of being Outed. Instead if outed, they probably will have to make the choice of living openly, perhaps in a tolerant country rather than their home country where being gay is illegal, and are likely to thank their Grindr hook up in the Olympics  for helping them be Free, and themselves, finally!

It's high time Grindr restore all Geo-locations services including Search/Explore in the Olympic Village and let the gays have much deserved fun for all their years of athletic training and preparation.   

Edited July 31 by brnbk
ingrained bad habit