More than 400 companies — including Tesla, Pfizer, Delta Air Lines and Amazon — have signed on to support civil rights legislation for LGBTQ people that is moving through Congress, advocates said Tuesday.
The Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based LGBTQ advocacy group, said its Business Coalition for the Equality Act has grown to 416 members, including dozens of Fortune 500 companies. Big names like Apple, PepsiCo, General Motors, CVS, Facebook, Marriott, Capital One, Starbucks and Home Depot pepper the list.
“It’s time that civil rights protections be extended to LGBT+ individuals nationwide on a clear, consistent and comprehensive basis,” said Carla Grant Pickens, IBM’s chief diversity and inclusion officer, in a statement distributed by the Human Rights Campaign.
The Equality Act would amend existing civil rights law to explicitly include sexual orientation and gender identification as protected characteristics. Those protections would extend to employment, housing, loan applications, education and other areas.
The bill passed the U.S. House 224-206 in February, with all Democrats but just three Republicans supporting it. Its fate in the closely divided Senate is uncertain. The House also passed the bill in the last Congress, but it didn’t advance to the Senate.
Among the bill’s opponents is the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has said it could force church halls and facilities to host functions that violate their beliefs.
Corporate endorsements of the bill have more than doubled since the House first passed it in 2019, the Human Rights Campaign said.
“We are seeing growing support from business leaders because they understand that the Equality Act is good for their employees, good for their businesses and good for our country,” the Human Rights Campaign President Alphonso David said in a statement.
An exec at gaming giant Gearbox has stated the developer may move outside of Texas if the state continues with legislation targeting the trans community.
David Najjab, the director of institutional partnerships at the Borderlands 3developer, said in testimony before the Texas House of Representatives that bills like the Texas Senate Bill 29 could force the studio to move elsewhere.
“Again we’re looking at another unnecessary bill. Just like the bathroom bill, this is a solution looking for a problem,” he said.
“Our game company is in competition worldwide. We export more than – we sell more to Asia than we do in the United States. We bring a lot of money into this state, we’re headquartered here.
“Don’t drive us to where we have to start expanding outside of Texas and outside the country.”
Bill S29, the “Fair Sports for Women and Girls Act”, requires public school students to participate in athletic competitions based on their assigned gender at birth.
“We are concerned to see a resurgence of efforts to exclude transgenderyouth from full participation in their communities, to criminalise or ban best-practice medical care that is proven to save lives, or to exclude LGBTQ people in a variety of other settings, including accessing healthcare, filling a prescription, or seeking legal representation,” reads the open letter, in part.
Gearbox are strong supporters of the LGBT+ community, with last year’s Borderlands 3 DLC Guns, Love and Tentacles revolving around a gay wedding. The game was nominated for multiple LGBT+ gaming awards.
A trans girl in Texas has received death threats for opposing the anti-trans bill.
Kai Shappley, a fourth-grader, spoke before the Texas state affairs committee against the bill on 12 April for “attacking” her identity.
Her mother has since taken over her social media accounts due to threats received.
Instagram is launching a new anti-bullying feature to filter out “racist, sexist, homophobic” abuse in your DMs.
While Instagram already “proactively looks for hate speech or bullying” in public comments, the new feature will focus the abuse users receive in direct messages.
The new tool will filter DM requests, where users say they receive the most abusive messages, containing “offensive words, phrases and emojis”.
Users will be able to toggle filters on and off for DMs and comments in a new “Hidden Words” privacy section, where they will be able to add words, phrases and emojis that they don’t want to see in addition to a predefined list.
The list of terms already created by Instagram was developed in collaboration with “anti-discrimination and anti-bullying organisations”.
Instagram said: “We understand the impact that abusive content – whether it’s racist, sexist, homophobic, or any other kind of abuse – can have on people.
“Nobody should have to experience that on Instagram. But combatting abuse is a complex challenge and there isn’t one single step we can take to eliminate it completely.”
To further combat hate on the platform, Instagram will also start filtering common misspellings of offensive terms in public comments, “so that even if a word you don’t want to see is accidentally or deliberately spelled wrong, you still won’t see it in your comments”.
In addition, a third new feature means that when a user blocks someone, they will also be able to preemptively block any new accounts the user might create in the future.
Amy and Stephanie Mudd drove an hour from their home in Glasgow, Kentucky, to the city of Radcliff on April 3 to meet with an accountant at Aries Tax Service.
Mudd said her mother-in-law, who lives in the area, recommended the business because it offers a $55 flat fee to file taxes electronically.
When they got there, they saw a sign on the door that listed 10 things customers should have with them if they want the business to e-file their tax return. But the last item on the list stopped them from opening the door. It read, “Homosexual marriage not recognized.”
Stephanie Mudd said the first emotion she felt was anger that businesses can still turn away same-sex couples.
“It just kind of makes your heart fall into your stomach,” Amy Mudd said.
Aries Tax Service.
The couple took a photo of the sign and left.
“We wanted to bring attention to it, so that he knows that that’s not OK,” Amy Mudd said. “Nowadays, you’re providing a public service, and it’s federal taxes, and in the United States, it’s OK for us to be married.”
Kenneth Randall, owner of Aries Tax Service, said the issue “is a matter of personal conviction.”
“I put it to any reasonable person: ‘If you have a matter that’s a central conviction for you, are you willing to stand up for it?’” he said. “I am.”
He added that there are other tax preparers in the area that same-sex couples could use and that he’s protected by federal law.
There’s no federal law that explicitly allows people, based on their personal beliefs, to turn away same-sex couples or other classes of people, but there’s also no federal or Kentucky state law that protects LGBTQ people from discrimination in public accommodations, such as businesses.
Legal advocates say situations like the Mudds’ are on the rise as conservative religious organizations, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, have been building campaigns and lawsuits for years to challenge civil rights laws.
“They want to get legal rulings that there are religious and free speech rights to violate these laws,” said Jennifer Pizer, law and policy director at Lambda Legal, a national LGBTQ legal organization. “We have seen a significant rise and a very troubling rise in these cases, and it’s not an accident.”
For years, same-sex couples have been turned away by business owners who don’t want to provide wedding-related services, citing their religious or moral beliefs. In 2018, the Supreme Court narrowly ruled in favor of Jack Phillips, a Christian baker who refused to make a cake for a gay couple’s wedding. The court ruled on a technicality — avoiding the issue of whether a business owner, due to their religious beliefs, could refuse to serve a same-sex couple.
Earlier this month, the ADF filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York arguing that the state’s nondiscrimination law unconstitutionally prohibits wedding photographer Emilee Carpenter “from adopting an editorial policy consistent with her beliefs about marriage.”
The complaint says Carpenter “is already willing to work with clients no matter who they are, including those in the LGBT community” but that the state goes too far by requiring that she “celebrate” same-sex marriage in images on her website.
The ADF also argues that part of the state law limiting statements that certain customers are “unwelcome, objectionable or not accepted, desired, or solicited” interferes with Carpenter’s free speech, because it doesn’t allow her to express her views about same-sex marriage on her website.
Pizer said the New York case represents an area of law that is unsettled, specifically as it relates to people who work in artistic fields like photography.
For the most part, courts have upheld nondiscrimination laws, but in the instances they haven’t, they often rule on technicalities or rule that the laws violate the freedom of expression of creative professionals, Pizer said. For instance, in September 2019, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled that the state’s nondiscrimination law violated the free speech of two artists who create custom wedding invitations by compelling them to promote same-sex weddings.
Pizer said using free speech rights to justify discrimination “represents a dramatic shift from what the law has been for a long time.”
“Why would you think that a video of a couple’s wedding would be the message of the person holding the camera?” she said. “If the law changes in that way, then it’s hard to see where there’s a limiting principle, and it means that civil rights laws, at best, have a big hole in them and maybe, at worst, have very little effect at all.”
The free speech argument could also represent a potential challenge to the Equality Act, proposed federal legislation that would protect LGBTQ people in many areas. The measure passed the House in February but has not yet been voted on in the Senate.
Pizer said that, because Kenneth Randall is an accountant and not a creative professional, she doesn’t think an argument related to free speech would apply if there were a federal or state nondiscrimination law in Kentucky.
But Randall said he refuses to file taxes for same-sex couples because it would require him to express recognition of their marriage. Randall also sells insurance, and he said he has both sold insurance to and filed taxes for single gay people. But if a same-sex couple asked him to sell them insurance, he would only do it if he could put them down as single, he said.
“I don’t hate a particular individual. It’s a stand on a particular institution that I find wrong,” he said, adding that he’s been harassed and threatened since local news outlets published stories about his sign. “If people are willing to accept that, fine. If they are not willing to accept it, there’s plenty of other places to go for insurance.”
Pizer said the idea that people can receive services elsewhere “ignores a core purpose of civil rights laws.” She said the lunch counter sit-ins held by Black college students in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960 to protest racial segregation weren’t about whether they could “get a sandwich.”
“It was about whether they were being treated the same as other people,” she said.
In the absence of a federal measure like the Equality Act or a statewide nondiscrimination law, the Mudds and couples like them don’t have any options for legal recourse, Pizer said, and businesses can — and do — continue to refuse to serve them.
In North Carolina, which also doesn’t have a statewide anti-discrimination law protecting LGBTQ people, at least two wedding venues made national news within the span of four months for refusing to host events for same-sex couples.
But the issue extends far past weddings. Some states, like Arkansas, have passed legislation that allows medical providers to refuse to serve LGBTQ people if it conflicts with their religious or moral beliefs. The Supreme Court will also soon decide a case that could allow private religious adoption agencies that receive federal funds to reject same-sex couples.
Pizer said growing acceptance of LGBTQ people has pressured some religious people “to stop doing types of discrimination that they’ve done for a long time.” That pressure has made them uncomfortable and it has made them feel victimized, in some cases, she said, and they’re fighting back.
“Being encouraged to treat everyone according to the golden rule is not being victimized and it’s not being excluded and it’s not being discriminated against,” she said. “When we’re operating in the public marketplace, being asked to stop discriminating is not to suffer discrimination yourself. It’s to be invited to play by the same rules that everybody else is expected to play by.”
As for the Mudds, they said they wouldn’t pursue legal action even if they could, but they wanted to make a statement about Randall’s choice to refuse same-sex couples.
“I understand that there’s freedom in this country, and that is what we were founded on,” Amy Mudd said. “And I understand that as a private practice, I guess he is allowed to do that … but to provide a service to the public and deny such a huge population is bad business.”
Stephanie Mudd added, “If we’re talking about morals, that’s quite the opposite of morals. People often hide behind their religion to justify their hate, and that is what is so frustrating.”
Parler will reportedly return to the Apple App Store, three months after the “free speech” social network was pulled from all major platforms.
Parler became one of America’s fastest-growing apps last year as Trump supporters flocked to it following November’s US election.
Racism, homophobia and transphobia, as well as spurious misinformation, soon became rife on the network, and the breaks were ultimately pulled soon after the Capitol riots in early January. Apple and Google blocked Parler from its app stores, while Amazon booted it from its web-hosting service, sending it briefly offline.
Now, Apple has reportedly approved Parler’s return to its App Store, according to a letter released by senator Mike Lee.
The letter, sent by Apple and dated Monday (19 April), states the app has made true on its word to improve moderation and better detect hate speech and incitements of violence.
This means that the app’s millions of users, which has included the likes of Graham Linehan, Katie Hopkins and Milo Yiannopoulos, will soon be able to download Parler on Apple devices.
Lee and representative Ken Buck had asked Apple for details as to why it removed Parler in January. The consumer electronic company explained in the letter it did so as Parler, on several occasions, “failed” to tame hate speech.
Parler hosted content prohibited by its App Store guidelines, Apple added.
Parler had long played fast and loose when it came to moderation – enticing users tired of what they saw as Twitter and Facebook’s increased crackdown on free speech.
In the days leading up to the Capitol riot, which saw a swarm of white supremacists and far-right militia groups storm the Capitol complex, Parler churned with conspiracy theories.
False accusations that Donald Trump had the election stolen from him heaved, as did a loose plot to confront Congress as it certified Joe Biden’s electoral win with violence and aggression.
As Apple’s senior director of government affairs Americas Timothy Powderly explained in the letter, Parler was full of posts that encouraged violence, denigrated various ethnic groups, races and religions, glorified Nazism, and called for violence against specific people”.
Violent rioters gather outside the Capitol building in Washington DC. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Shunned by tech companies, the letter shows that Pariah pleaded to Apple, “proposing updates to its app and the app’s content moderation practices”.
Across a review stage, a lengthy back-and-forth between Parler and Apple’s app review team unfolded.
“As a result of those conversations, Parler has proposed updates to its app and the app’s content moderation practices, and the App Review Team has informed Parler as of April 14, 2021, that its proposed updated app will be approved for reinstatement to the App Store,” Powderly wrote.
“Apple anticipates that the updated Parler app will become available immediately upon Parler releasing it.”
Powderly, however, did not detail what specific changes to its platform Parler has made, other than stress that it now meets Apple’s content moderation policies.
On Parler’s claims that the tech companies had plotted together to oust it, Powderly wrote: “Apple made an independent decision to remove Parler for non-compliance with the guidelines, and it did not coordinate or otherwise consult with Google or Amazon with respect to that decision.
The popular gay dating service Manhunt was hit by a huge data breach in February that allowed hackers to steal thousands of user accounts.
TechCrunch reports that the app, which claims to have six million male members, admitted the hack in a notice filed with the Washington attorney general on 1 April.
The notice reveals that Manhunt only realised its security had been breached in early March, approximately a month after it happened.
“On March 2, 2021, Manhunt discovered that an attacker had gained access to a database that stored account credentials for Manhunt users,” it states.
“The attacker downloaded the usernames, email addresses and passwords for a subset of our users in early February 2021.”
The notice did not say if the passwords were securely encoded in a scrambled format or if they were stored in plain text.
Stacey Brandenburg, an attorney for Manhunt, said in an email to Techcrunch that 11 per cent of Manhunt users were affected by the breach.
The app says it “immediately took steps to remediate the threat and secure its systems” with a forced reset for passwords of affected accounts.
“Manhunt takes the security of its users very seriously,” the notice claimed, adding that it would be notifying affected users with an email and an inbox message.
However, questions remain about how the dating service handled the breach, as it wasn’t until mid-March that the app began alerting users to begin password resets to protect their account information.
On 21 March the company tweeted: “At this time, all Manhunt users are required to update their password to ensure it meets the updated password requirements.”
But users weren’t ever made aware of the hack itself, or that their information might have been stolen.
Kellogg’s is launching a limited edition LGBT-themed cereal in celebration of Pride, so you can start your day with the breakfast of champions: glitter.
The company teamed up with GLAAD to create the special cereal, “Together with Pride”, which is made of rainbow heart-shaped pieces and – yes – edible glitter.
The boxes will hit shelves this May, just in time for Pride month, and for each one sold Kellogg’s will donate three dollars to GLAAD to support their efforts to accelerate LGBT+ rights.
The 7.8-ounce boxes have a suggested retail price of around $4, and shoppers must upload a copy of their receipt to Kellogg’s Family Rewards to support the donation.
The box features a variety of familiar Kellogg’s characters – Tony the Tiger, Snap, Crackle and Pop, Toucan Sam and the frosted Mini Wheat – to “celebrate everyone having a seat at the breakfast table together,” Kellogg’s said.
It’s not the first time Kellogg’s has joined forces with the GLAAD. The two have a long-standing partnership after they created another Pride-themed breakfast, called “All Together Cereal,” in 2019.
Unlike their latest offering, the special edition boxes were only available online and retailed at a much pricier $19.99.
Each one contained six mini cereal boxes packaged inside one “to celebrate the belief that we all belong together”.
“The box brings together six of the famous Kellogg mascots and cereals inside the same carton as a symbol of acceptance no matter how you look, where you’re from or who you love,” the company said at the time.
Chief diversity officer Priscilla Koranteng added: “At Kellogg, we are firmly committed to equality and inclusion in the workplace, marketplace and in the communities where we work and live.
“We have long been allies and supporters of LGBTQ employees, their families and the community. For more than 100 years, Kellogg has nourished families so they can flourish and thrive, and the company continues to welcome everyone to the table.”
Once viewed as unwelcoming to the LGBTQ community, popular online matchmaker eHarmony has gone through a queer-friendly rebranding of late.
The site, which boasts more than 2 million messages a week, began offering same-sex matches in 2019. This winter, it launched its first queer-inclusive commercial, featuring a lesbian couple.https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Vfnym5MlZE
The ad, “I Scream,” is part of eHarmony’s current “Real Love” campaign and opens on a female couple in their kitchen. In between kisses, one woman tastes her partner’s cooking and makes it clear she’s not a fan. The pair wind up on the couch enjoying a pint of ice cream and going in for another peck.
“Being honest with each other,” a voiceover announces. “Saying yes to great ideas. eHarmony — here for real love.”
Gareth Mandel, chief operating officer at eHarmony, told NBC News it was important that “our ad campaigns, our platform, and everything else we do accurately reflect what real love, real dating and real relationships look like both today and always.”
“We’ve spent substantial time recently bringing our entire team together to formalize a company mission and values statement that reflects who we are today,” he said, “Explicitly reflecting a brand and a workplace that strives to be safe, inclusive and welcoming to each and every member of our community.”
The ad, and the “Real Love” campaign in general, are part of a sitewide revamp to move the company away from its conservative origins — but not everyone is on board with the company’s inclusive turn.
Launched in 2000 by Neil Clark Warren and his son-in-law, Greg Forgatch, eHarmony was different from most dating sites: Rather than allow members to pore through hundreds of profiles, it paired them based on a lengthy compatibility quiz.
And, initially, the site only offered heterosexual matches.
Publicly, Warren — a clinical psychologist, seminary professor and devout Christian — claimed that was because he had no expertise when it came to gay dating. But in 2005, before same-sex marriage was recognized in most states, he told USA Today, “We don’t really want to participate in something that’s illegal.”
In an interview with the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family in 2004, Warren said he had to be diplomatic about how he discussed the site’s lack of same-sex options.
“Cities like San Francisco, Chicago or New York — they could shut us down so fast. We don’t want to make enemies out of them,” Warren said. “But at the same time, I take a real strong stand against same-sex marriage anywhere that I can comment on it.”
In eHarmony’s early years, Warren frequently plugged the site on the radio program of evangelical author James Dobson, who co-founded Focus on the Family. The anti-LGBTQ organization also published several of Warren’s self-help books.
As eHarmony continued to grow, though, Warren distanced himself from the group. In 2005, he ended his appearances on Dobson’s show and bought the publishing rights to his books.
After settling a discrimination lawsuit in New Jersey in 2008, eHarmony agreed to launch Compatible Partners, a separate dating site that enabled users to make same-sex matches. It was an imperfect solution the Los Angeles Times referred to as a “shotgun wedding.” There was no link to Compatible Partners on the main eHarmony site, and those interested in both men and women had to buy two subscriptions, according to Mashable. It took another discrimination suit, this one in California, for the two sites to be reciprocal.
Warren retired from running eHarmony in 2007 but returned as chief executive in 2012. In a 2013 interview with CNBC, he lamented that his company was forced to “put up a same-sex site” and said gay marriage “has really damaged our company.”
“We literally had to hire guards to protect our lives, because the people were so hurt and angry with us,” he said at the time, because “Christian people” felt the company’s gay dating site was “a violation to scripture.”
Warren also suggested to CNBC that eHarmony invest $10 million to “figure out” homosexuality, which he called “at the very best … a painful way for a lot of people to have to live.”
Warren stepped down as CEO again in 2016 and is no longer involved with the company, according to Mandel. Since 2019, eHarmony has been led by a three-person team — Mandel, Chief Customer Care Officer Carlos Robles and Chief Financial Officer Stefan Schulze.
CompatiblePartners.com started redirecting to the main eHarmony site in November 2019. Mandel said the response has been largely positive, and LGBTQ usership has grown 109 percent year-over-year.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve taken several actions to become more of the company that we want to be,” he said. “One of our main objectives is to ensure we’re always striving to create a culture that’s diverse, inclusive and welcoming to all of our members and our employees. Our commitment to make sure our platform reflects that is a priority for us as a company.”
eHarmony’s benefits package for 2021 offers coverage for gender-affirming surgery, as well as equal parental leave, regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, and including adoptive and foster parents.
“While we’re proud of the changes we’ve made to our platform, we recognize that we have work left to do, and are committed to finding ways to be more inclusive to people of all gender identities and sexual orientations across all facets of what we do,” Mandel said.
While many have applauded eHarmony’s “LGBTQ epiphany,” the company’s “Real Love” campaign has put it in the crosshairs of the right-wing Christian group One Million Moms. The group, which is part of the conservative American Family Association, launched a petition Jan. 29 criticizing the “I Scream” commercial as an “attempt to normalize and glorify the LGBTQ lifestyle,” which it calls “unnatural and immoral.”
“This eHarmony ad brainwashes children and adults by desensitizing them and convincing them that homosexuality is natural,” a statement on the One Million Moms website reads, “when in reality it is an unnatural love that is forbidden by Scripture just like love rooted in adultery is forbidden.”
The petition, which calls on eHarmony to pull the spot, received more than 15,300 signatures as of Tuesday afternoon.
“I am extremely disappointed that eHarmony is refusing to remain neutral in the cultural war by pushing the LGBTQ agenda on families,” it reads in part.
The organization often opposes LGBTQ-inclusive programming and advertising. In October, it protested an Uber Eats commercialfeaturing Olympic gymnast Simone Biles and nonbinary “Queer Eye” star Jonathan Van Ness. In 2019, it targeted Disney/Pixar’s “Toy Story 4” for including a scene of two moms dropping their child off at school, and it called on Hallmark Channel to remove an ad for the wedding planning website Zola featuring a same-sex wedding.
The impact of OMM’s campaigns, though, is questionable at best: ”Toy Story 4” earned more than $1 billion worldwide at the box office without removing the offending scene; Uber Eats is still running the Jonathan Van Ness commercial; and after briefly pulling the Zola ad, Hallmark reinstated it and apologized for the “hurt and disappointment it has unintentionally caused.”
For the first time, the popular American Girl franchise has released a doll with an LGBT+ storyline, so of course homophobes are trying to stage a boycott.
The iconic dolls were a cultural phenomenon in the ’90s and still command a multi-generational fanbase in the US, with some of the toys selling for thousands online.
Each doll is accompanied by a book telling the character’s story, but the 2021 Girl of the Year, Kira Bailey, is dividing loyal fans – because she has two gay aunts.
In Kira Down Under, the animal-loving 10-year-old goes to Australia to spend the summer at her aunts’ wildlife sanctuary. The book casually mentions that the two women got married “after the law was changed to allow it”.
It’s the first time a same-sex relationship has been mentioned in an American Girl story, and for some, it was a step too far.
“American Girl collectors continue to be the worst people in the world,” said Boston collector Rebecca Nachman as she revealed the debate raging across private fan groups.
“People lost their goddamn minds, there was so much blatant homophobia in the American Girl Facebook groups I’m in, it was horrific. People were saying, ‘children are innocent, they shouldn’t have to read about sex’, as if American Girl is publishing a lesbian porno.”
While many collectors called for a boycott of the beloved brand, others took their anger out on Amazon, where a third of the reviews for the book give only one star.
“Homosexuality is an inappropriate topic for a children’s book and I am very disappointed that it was woven so blatantly into the storyline for Kira,” read one negative review.
“The storyline is inappropriate and far too mature for young readers,” wrote another, and “Parents are not informed of lesbian relationship in the story”.
It’s not the first time American Girl has been hit with a backlash for supporting the LGBT+ community.
In 2005 several homophobes organised a boycott after learning the brand supported the pro-LGBT+ charity Girls Inc. Yet another boycott was called in 2015, after a girl with two fathers featured in American Girl magazine.
American Girl defended the decision to introduce an LGBT+ storyline, saying it was important that the characters reflected the modern world.
“From the beginning, our ‘Girl of the Year’ characters have been designed to reflect girls’ lives today and the realities of the times,” Julie Parks, an American Girl spokesperson, told Yahoo Life.
“As a brand, we’ve always strived to share the message that there’s no ‘magic recipe’ for a family and that families can be made up of all kinds of ingredients – and each is unique and lovely.
“We know for girls who can directly relate to Kira’s circumstances (i.e. a father who has passed away or a couple in a same-sex marriage), we’re glad to show them that the make-up of one’s family doesn’t matter – it’s still a family and that’s all the counts. It’s a sentiment we love at American Girl.”
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Grindr has been fined £8.5 million for illegally selling user data, including tracking codes and precise locations, in a serious violation of European privacy law.
The Norwegian Data Protection Authority revealed on Monday (25 January) that the global hook-up app had shared users’ private details with at least five advertisers, including Twitter’s own advertising platform, which may in turn share data with more than 100 partners.
The app had illegally transmitted users’ IP address, advertising ID, GPS location, age and gender, essentially tagging individuals as LGBT+ without obtaining their explicit consent.
The fine of 100 million Norwegian kroner (£8.5m or $11.7m US) is the highest ever issued by the authority and amounts to around 10 per cent of Grindr’s estimated global annual revenue, reflecting the “very severe” nature of the breach.
The agency notes that, as the world’s most popular gay dating app, Grindr is active in nearly every country in the world; the privacy violation could have put users at serious risk in countries like Qatar and Pakistan, where homosexuality is criminalised.
“If someone finds out that they are gay and knows their movements, they may be harmed,” said Tobias Judin, head of the Norwegian Data Protection Authority’s international department.
“We’re trying to make these apps and services understand that this approach – not informing users, not gaining a valid consent to share their data – is completely unacceptable.”
In a statement to the New York Times, a spokesperson for Grindr said the company had obtained “valid legal consent from all” of its users in Europe on multiple occasions and was confident that its “approach to user privacy is first in class” among social apps.
“We continually enhance our privacy practices in consideration of evolving privacy laws and regulations, and look forward to entering into a productive dialogue with the Norwegian Data Protection Authority,” they added.
Grindr has until 15 February to officially respond to the ruling, after which the Data Protection Authority will make its final decision in the case.
