Don’t argue, and people have it, that the top gay dating apps are now made to make money and hook up. It’s so full of bots, sometimes it doesn’t even have a real connection.
Grindr, with its 15 million active users, is drowning in ads while pushing expensive sales to users. (In February, as part of an overhaul of its “gaI,” the company announced a new $500 monthly subscription tier.) Sniffies were popular among cruisers until the weather’s April response to Match Group’s $100 million investment raised concerns that another small space could infiltrate the dating giant’s conglomerate.
As the public backlash against popular queer apps continues to mount, dozens of tech entrepreneurs are trying to meet demand by doubling down on privacy-conscious, community-driven alternatives.
Calum Bowden, who goes by the online persona @donjackoghue, launched MeetMarket in March. Currently only available as a web app, MeetMarket includes all the key features of your typical dating app—a customizable profile, a grid of nearby users—with one big difference. It is built on a decentralized identity system, which means that MeetMarket does not store users’ emails, passwords, or personal information. Users store everything on their device, giving them complete control and ownership over their data and how it is shared. Messages on the platform are end-to-end encrypted, and Bowden says it will remain ad-free, even for non-paying members. (A monthly membership costs €12, or $13.99.)
“Decentralization and data privacy make a lot of sense for non-traditional people, especially in hostile legal environments or in the US right now, where you don’t really know which digital platforms are in your best interest,” said the 34-year-old PhD student in Berlin who studies the sociology of technology and organization.
Within the first 48 hours of MeetMarket’s launch on March 24, more than 12,000 people had signed up, and about 60,000 people have used it since then. The app averages about 5,000 weekly visitors, according to Bowden, although not many are done at the same time in the same cities. “It’s more social than just having a quick conversation.” But rare encounters still happen, he says. “Midwest low jocks are eating the meet market up,” one user commented on X.
Bowden didn’t expect public sentiment to turn sour on Sniffies in the weeks after its introduction. Still, your time couldn’t have been more fun. “When Sniffies announced their investment in Match Group, I was like, how are they fueling my fire?” he asks. “This is exactly the model that venture capital leads to. That’s why these types of technology economies are so bad, because they basically force the development of the digital platform.” The sniffers did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bowden, who describes himself as a “utopian,” is the founder of the Trust, a nonprofit organization that acts as a kind of incubator to generate ideas “as a critique of technology and the status quo,” he said. With MeetMarket, he wanted to create an app that gives users more agency over their experience without slowing it down.
Sometimes it may seem that Big Dating wants people to believe that it is the only answer to cure their love problems—Bumble CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd recently told Axios that there is not much time for niche apps—but the opposite is proving to be true, as people want more clarity and purpose in their online dating.
“Gay men have different nationalities, different cultures, different aesthetics and different ways they want to be seen,” says Justin Finnegan, a 35-year-old Toronto software engineer who created Chunkr, a gay dating app that has become synonymous with bears, cubs, cubs and the people they love despite being gay at first.
