The Enshittification of Gay Dating Apps

Here's a cycle you might recognize:

A new app launches. It's simple, it works, and it solves a real problem. Users flock to it. The company grows. Investors arrive with money and expectations. Then, gradually, the app gets worse. Ads multiply. Features disappear behind paywalls. The interface clutters with upsells. What was once useful becomes frustrating. But by now you're locked in — your connections are there, your habits are formed — so you keep using it while complaining constantly.

Writer Cory Doctorow coined a term for this pattern: enshittification. It describes "how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves."

Grindr, fifteen years old and still the dominant gay dating app, has become a case study in enshittification. And its users are, finally, ready to revolt.

The Decline in User Experience

If you've used Grindr recently, you've noticed the changes:

Ads everywhere. Free users face a barrage of interstitial ads — full-screen interruptions that appear when you open the app, when you view profiles, when you try to do almost anything. Users report ads appearing as often as every few taps.

Features locked behind paywalls. Capabilities that were once free have migrated to premium tiers. In 2024, Grindr put "taps" — a lightweight way to signal interest — behind a paywall. The free experience has been progressively hollowed out.

Premium price increases. Grindr has tested subscription prices as high as $500/year for its top tier. While exact pricing varies by location and user, the trend is clear: paying users are being squeezed harder.

Degraded core functionality. Users report seeing fewer profiles, receiving fewer messages, and experiencing what feels like algorithmic throttling designed to push them toward paid subscriptions. (Grindr denies intentional manipulation, but the perception shapes user experience regardless.)

Technical issues. Bugs, crashes, and slow performance have accompanied the bloat of ads and monetization features.

The result, according to an investor who studied the company, is "a prime example of enshittification that leads to user exodus." User reviews on the App Store and Trustpilot have turned scathing. Reddit communities buzz with frustration. The word "enshittification" appears constantly in discussions of Grindr.

Why This Is Happening

Enshittification isn't random — it follows from business incentives. Understanding those incentives explains why Grindr has degraded and why alternatives might avoid the same fate.

The IPO effect. Grindr went public on the NYSE in November 2022. Public companies face pressure to show growth every quarter. When user growth slows (Grindr has around 13 million monthly active users, and the addressable market has limits), revenue growth must come from extracting more value from existing users.

Advertising economics. Free apps that run on advertising need to maximize engagement and ad impressions. This creates incentives to make the app slightly addictive, slightly frustrating, and full of reasons to keep tapping. User wellbeing becomes secondary to time-on-app.

The paywall ratchet. Once premium tiers exist, there's constant pressure to move features from free to paid. Every feature that exists for free is "leaving money on the table." Over time, free users get less and less, while paying users face higher prices for what they already had.

Network effects trap users. Grindr's dominance isn't because it's the best app — it's because it has the most users. If the people you want to meet are on Grindr, you'll use Grindr regardless of how bad the experience gets. This reduces competitive pressure to maintain quality.

Private equity extraction. Before its IPO, Grindr passed through the hands of several owners, including San Vicente Acquisition Partners (a group that acquired it from a Chinese company for $600 million). Each ownership transition involves extracting value, often at the expense of the product.

The Broader Pattern

Grindr isn't alone. This pattern plays out across social and dating apps:

Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and dozens of other dating apps, has faced similar criticism. Users complain of degraded free experiences, expensive subscriptions, and features designed to maximize revenue rather than successful matches. A former employee told the press that the company actively avoids making its apps "too good" at matching because users who find partners stop paying.

Twitter/X, Facebook, and Instagram have all followed enshittification trajectories, cluttering once-clean experiences with ads, algorithmic manipulation, and features nobody asked for.

The pattern isn't inevitable, but it is common when companies prioritize short-term revenue extraction over long-term user value.

What Users Actually Want

The frustration with Grindr reflects a gap between what the app delivers and what users want:

Functionality that works. The core promise of a dating app is helping you meet people. Users want that to work reliably, not be degraded to push subscriptions.

Respect for attention. Constant ads aren't just annoying — they communicate that the company views users as products to be monetized, not people to be served.

Value for money. Users willing to pay want features that genuinely improve their experience, not the removal of artificially imposed frustrations.

Privacy. As covered elsewhere, Grindr's history of sharing user data (including HIV status) with advertisers has eroded trust. Users want apps that protect their sensitive information.

Community. Dating apps could facilitate community, not just transactions. Users want to feel like participants in something, not targets of extraction.

Signs of Revolt

User frustration is translating into action:

Competitors gaining ground. Apps like Scruff (which emphasizes community features and has avoided aggressive enshittification), Sniffies (with its map-based, anonymous approach), and various regional alternatives are attracting users fleeing Grindr.

Vocal criticism. The conversation about Grindr's decline has gone mainstream, covered in outlets from Them to Mashable to business publications analyzing the company's stock. The word "enshittification" appearing in Trustpilot reviews signals how widely the criticism has spread.

Investor concern. A research report from Ningi Research titled its analysis of Grindr "Revolting User Base, Vanishing Moat." When investment analysts are writing about user revolt, companies take notice.

Regulatory pressure. Grindr's privacy violations have resulted in millions in fines and ongoing legal challenges. Regulatory scrutiny adds costs and risks to business-as-usual.

What Alternatives Look Like

If enshittification is driven by business models, the solution involves different business models:

Subscription-only, no ads. When the only revenue comes from subscriptions, there's no incentive to degrade the free experience or maximize ad impressions. The company succeeds when users are happy enough to pay, not when they're frustrated enough to pay to remove frustrations.

Reasonable pricing. Subscriptions should reflect the value provided, not test how much users can be squeezed. Sustainable businesses build long-term relationships with customers, not extract maximum short-term revenue.

User-aligned incentives. The goal of a dating app should be helping users make connections, not maximizing time-on-app. Design choices should follow from that goal.

Privacy as foundation. Apps that don't collect unnecessary data can't be tempted to monetize it. Privacy-first design removes a category of enshittification potential.

Sustainable ownership. Companies owned by users, supported by foundations, or structured to resist short-term extraction pressures are more likely to maintain quality over time.

The Market Is Ready

Here's the opportunity: users are frustrated, competitors are emerging, and the failures of the dominant model are obvious. The market is ready for apps built on different principles.

This isn't about nostalgia for how Grindr used to be. It's about recognizing that the incentive structures driving current apps are fundamentally misaligned with user interests, and that different structures could produce different results.

LGBTQ+ users deserve apps that treat them as community members, not extraction targets. We deserve technology that serves connection rather than undermining it. We deserve better than enshittification.

The question is whether enough users will vote with their downloads, their subscriptions, and their attention to make alternatives viable. The frustration is there. The alternatives are emerging. What happens next depends on the choices we make.

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