Grindr, one of the participating apps, does not include standard rejection statements but is exploring this option to help users on both sides of what is inevitably a “high-intensity moment,” said Jack Harrison-Quintana, the company’s director of equality.
#BEST GAY DATING APP SAN FRANCISCO PLUS#
Respondents also believed apps could help diminish the pain of rejection by providing neutral, prewritten messages for users to send, such as “sorry, it’s not a match.”Ĭheck the water shortage status of your area, plus see reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.
Another was to allow users to restrict who can see profile fields with potentially sensitive information, such as HIV status or gender identity. One popular recommendation from respondents was to allow all users, and not just paying customers, to block anyone they feel is being abusive. “To the extent that the users get to control and customize, that will increase their positive experiences on the apps and decrease the likelihood that they’ll have these negative experiences.” “It’s a society-wide problem, and I do agree that gay men’s dating apps are not going to single-handedly address it, but that doesn’t mean they can’t play a role,” she said.
#BEST GAY DATING APP SAN FRANCISCO PC#
“I find this overreach in striving to be PC as offensive and ridiculous.”īut most respondents recognized that apps could support better online behavior and reduce unnecessary pain, Hecht said. “If someone does not meet the preferences specified by the user for being ‘fat,’ ‘too old,’ or not the right ‘race,’ then too bad,” wrote one. Some respondents quoted in the report dismissed the initiative as silly or unwarranted. Given that the app environment is the source of stress, Pachankis said, it makes sense for Building Healthy Online Communities and other public health organizations to try to influence it They were also more likely to choose riskier options in a card-playing game. In subsequent responses on questionnaires, the men exposed to the dismissive comments reported greater emotional distress and expressed more skepticism about the benefits of condoms. (The comments were all computer-generated.) In one study, Pachankis and his colleagues simulated a gay app environment in which some research participants were exposed to dismissive comments and others to approving comments. Apps, he added, “are a site of a lot of potential rejection in a short amount of time in a way that is particularly anonymous and efficient and can be really detrimental.” “I was initially quite surprised that gay men were consistently noting their treatment at the hands of other gay men as being a predominant stressor,” Pachankis said. But John Pachankis, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health who studies gay men’s health, said his research has identified aggressiveness within the gay community as a major problem. Gay and bisexual men, like other groups that face discrimination, have higher rates of depression, substance misuse and related mental health concerns. When asked last month by email whether meeting sites that cater to the general population should also be trying to address the issue, Evan Bonnstetter, Tinder’s director of product policy, responded that the company was “unable to participate in this opportunity.” (Bonnstetter has since left Tinder.) Bumble, another site popular with heterosexuals, did not respond to a request for comment. Mean online behavior is, of course, not limited to apps for men.
“We’ve had a non-bullying policy since day one,” said David Lesage, marketing and social media director for Adam4Adam. Representatives for some of the participating apps said they welcomed the collaboration. “If I can filter out people who wrote ‘no fats, no fems, no black people,’ I don’t even have to deal with seeing it,” wrote one respondent quoted in the group’s report on the data gathered from app users. It also sought advice on technical improvements the apps could make, such as offering users greater flexibility in conducting searches for contacts. Through surveys and focus groups, the group asked more than 5,000 users of nine gay apps how the sites could support better online behavior related to race, appearance, HIV status, age, disability, gender identity and other factors.