Topics: Olympics, Travel, LGBTQ, Sex and Relationships, Sport, Social Media
Grindr has introduced enhanced safety features for LGBTQ+ athletes heading to Europe for the Winter Olympics this week.
Some 2,900 athletes are to descend on the Olympic Villages across Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy, between February 6 and February 22.
There will be 19 days of sport competitions between more than 90 National Olympic Committees, from Alpine skiing and bobsleigh to curling and snowboarding.
While there will be plenty of adrenaline fueling world-class competition, sporting stars looking for a thrill in their love life will be able to do so safely on Grindr.
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The prestigious sporting event is apparently a hot bed for hook-up culture, with organizers of the 2024 games in Paris reportedly supplying upwards of 300,000 condoms, as per Sky News.
With that in mind, popular LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr is taking extra steps to protect athletes during the Olympics - especially those who are from countries where being queer is still classed as illegal or unsafe - as they step into the international stage to do their country proud.
AJ Balance, chief product officer at Grindr, said: "The Olympic Games bring heightened visibility, which can create real safety risks for LGBTQ+ athletes, especially those who are not out or come from countries where being LGBTQ+ is dangerous or illegal.
"These temporary changes are about reducing that risk and giving users greater control of their privacy while keeping the app available."
The app has successfully implemented similar measures during the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, and 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, France.
This time, the Explore and Roam features will be disabled within the Olympic Villages, stopping other users from outside venues being able to browse who's who.
This is important in preventing athletes from being identified and possibly 'outed'.
Distance visibility will also be turned off by default, with the option to share approximate distance if users choose to.
This way, athletes will still be able to connect - they just won't be broadcasting their location while doing so.
When the Games begins, everyone in the Olympic Village will get access to special features that are usually paywalled.
As Grindr explained in its blog, these include the ability to unsend messages from both sides of a conversation and have disappearing messages deleted automatically after they're read.
Screenshot blocking will also be in place, preventing people capturing and sharing profiles and chat logs.
Private video, which allows viewing only once, will be turned off entirely within the Village,
Safety measures were implemented after a straight male Daily Beast journalist used the app to write about village hook-up culture at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
While the article didn't outright identify athletes, it did pertain to identifying details including height, weight nationality and descriptions of profile photos, the BBC reported.
The Daily Beast went on to remove the article, addressing the situation with a statement which read, in part: "The article was not intended to do harm or degrade members of the LGBT community, but intent doesn't matter, impact does."
