Tinder and Grindr are lashing out at an AIDS advocacy group that ran billboards suggesting a link between dating apps and a spike in sexually transmitted diseases.
The Los Angeles billboards feature a silhouette of two couples — one pairs the Tinder logo with the word "chlamydia" and the other features Grindr and gonorrhea.
The Los Angeles-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation said the purpose was to encourage people to regularly test for STDs and warn of their growing rate.
IMAGE: COURTESY OF THE AIDS HEALTH FOUNDATION
"In many ways, location-based mobile dating apps are becoming a digital bathhouse for millennials wherein the next sexual encounter can literally be just be a few feet away — as well as the next STD," Whitney Engeran-Cordova, senior public health director for the foundation, said in a statement.
The prominent logo placement didn't sit well with either of the matchmaking companies. Tinder sent a cease-and-desist letter within 24 hours, demanding that the ad be removed, and Grindr pulled the ads that the foundation had run on the location-based dating app, the group said.
"These unprovoked and wholly unsubstantiated accusations are made to irreparably damage Tinder's reputation in an attempt to encourage others to take an HIV test offered by your organization," the letter said.
The company did not respond to our request for comment.
Grindr also contacted the organization in order to "assess" their "relationship," a company spokesperson said.
"We were surprised at the approach the AHF took, and paused the campaign in order to speak with them and assess our relationship," the company said in a statement. "In the end, we’re all on the same page regarding this issue, as health and wellness concerns us all."
But the organization is holding fast on continuing the ad campaign, which includes a dozen billboards and 45 bus bench ads in the LA area.
"If they had done their research they would know that we are not people who would be easily intimidated," AIDS Healthcare Foundation president Michael Weinstein toldMashable. "We are not against these apps — we are not trying to shut them down...But the reality of the matter is that there is a connection between these hookup sites and an increase that we've seen in STDs."
This isn't the first time that Tinder has publicly feuded with those that have pointed to a less savory side of its side-swiping formula. Last month, the company launched a Twitter barrage at Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales over a story that criticized the hookup culture surrounding the app. But this time around, Tinder seems to have thought better of using Twitter as a soapbox.
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