{"id":254811,"date":"2026-05-25T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/these-privacy-conscious-gay-dating-apps-want-to-dethrone-grindr\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T08:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T12:25:10","slug":"these-privacy-conscious-gay-dating-apps-want-to-dethrone-grindr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/these-privacy-conscious-gay-dating-apps-want-to-dethrone-grindr\/","title":{"rendered":"These Privacy-Conscious Gay Dating Apps Want to Dethrone Grindr"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/these-privacy-conscious-gay-dating-apps-want-to-dethrone-grindr\/\">These Privacy-Conscious Gay Dating Apps Want to Dethrone Grindr<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/these-privacy-conscious-gay-dating-apps-want-to-dethrone-grindr\/\">https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/these-privacy-conscious-gay-dating-apps-want-to-dethrone-grindr\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-05-25 07:30:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.wired.com\">www.wired.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"lead-in-text-callout\">You could argue,<\/span> and people have, that the top gay dating apps are now optimized for monetization and juicing engagement loops. Increasingly overrun with bots, they are at times even devoid of actual connection.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Grindr, with its 15 million monthly active users, is drowning in ads while pushing expensive upsells on users. (In February, as part of its \u201cgAI\u201d overhaul, the company announced a new premium monthly subscription tier for $500.) Sniffies was beloved by cruisers until the seismic reaction in April to Match Group\u2019s $100 million investment sparked concerns that another queer space could get absorbed into a larger dating conglomerate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">As public backlash against popular queer apps continues to mount, a batch of tech entrepreneurs are scrambling to meet the demand by doubling down on privacy-conscious, community-driven alternatives.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Calum Bowden, who posts under the internet persona @donjackoghue, launched MeetMarket in March. Currently only available as a web app, MeetMarket includes all the core features of your typical hookup app\u2014a customizable profile, a grid of nearby users\u2014with one major difference. It was built on a decentralized identity system, meaning MeetMarket doesn\u2019t store users\u2019 emails, passwords, or personal information. Users store everything on their device, giving them full control and ownership over their data and how it\u2019s shared. Messages on the platform are end-to-end encrypted, and Bowden says it will always be ad-free, even for nonpaying members. (A monthly membership costs \u20ac12, or $13.99.)<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">\u201cDecentralization and data privacy make a lot of sense for queer people in general, and especially in hostile legal environments or in the US right now, where you don\u2019t really know what digital platforms actually have your best interest in mind,\u201d says the 34-year-old PhD student in Berlin who studies the sociology of technology and organization.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Within the first 48 hours of MeetMarket\u2019s launch on March 24, over 12,000 people had&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/these-privacy-conscious-gay-dating-apps-want-to-dethrone-grindr\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>These Privacy-Conscious Gay Dating Apps Want to Dethrone Grindr https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/these-privacy-conscious-gay-dating-apps-want-to-dethrone-grindr\/ Publish Date: 2026-05-25 07:30:00 Source&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":254813,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.wired.com\/photos\/6a07afab67132e88ffa73314\/191:100\/w_1280,c_limit\/Culture_TheDecentralizedHook-upApp_v3.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-254811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254811"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254811\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254814,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254811\/revisions\/254814"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}