Thirty-one theses on dating capitalism
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PART TWO — THE GRID
I
Revenue up, payers down
II
Success ends subscriptions
III
Manufactured scarcity
IV
One owner, many brands
Hidden ranking, patented swipe
VI
Volume produces refusal
VII
The app is the destination
VIII
Demographic pricing
IX
Fabricated interest
X
Safety became an upgrade
XI
Intentionality drives growth
XII
Queer platforms consolidated
XIII
Contraction intensifies extraction
XIV
Free users are inventory
XV
Global risk, concentrated revenue
XVI
Health data as telemetry
XVII
Data as national security
XVIII
Membership reveals identity
XIX
Identification without breach
XX
Profiles sold as commodities
XXI
The platform remembers more
XXII
Community versus its workers
XXIII
Extraction is optional
XXIV
Refusal is not innocence
XXV
The grid is optional
XXVI
Filtering is not sorting
XXVII
The applications work
XXVIII
Lifeline and trap
XXIX
Loneliness is the market
XXX
Companionship without reciprocity
XXXI
Named, not stopped
THESIS XVI
PART TWO — THE GRID
Health status was handled as telemetry.
HIV status travelled with location, device and identity data.
In April 2018 the Norwegian research foundation SINTEF, commissioned by the Swedish broadcaster SVT, found that Grindr was transmitting users' HIV status and last-tested date to the analytics vendors Apptimize and Localytics, bundled with GPS position, phone identifier and email address. The same analysis found tribe, sexuality, relationship status and ethnicity passing to advertising companies, in some cases unencrypted, across a base of around 3.6 million daily users. The chief technology officer described the arrangement as standard practice in the mobile app ecosystem. Senators Markey and Blumenthal wrote to all three companies the following day.
EVIDENCE SNAPSHOT
HIV status
HEALTH DATA
HIV status was transmitted alongside testing information
GPS + ID
ASSOCIATED DATA
Health data travelled with location and device identifiers
~3.6M/day
USERS
Approximate daily user base at the time
2 vendors
VENDORS
External analytics companies named in the investigation
KEY FINDING
In April 2018 the Norwegian research foundation SINTEF, commissioned by the Swedish broadcaster SVT, found that Grindr was transmitting users' HIV status and last-tested date to the analytics vendors Apptimize and Localytics, bundled with GPS position, phone identifier and email address.
IMPLICATION
Information entered for intimate communication was processed as ordinary analytics telemetry.
Source apparatus
SOURCE 01
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TECHNICAL INVESTIGATION
Ghorayshi, A., & Ray, S. (2018, April 2). Grindr is sharing the HIV status of its users with other companies. BuzzFeed News.
SOURCE 02
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TECHNICAL INVESTIGATION
Pultier, A., Nordbø, A., & Bjørnstad, C. (2018). An analysis of the "free" dating app ecosystem. SINTEF.