16 Grindr Profiles Now Banned Under the New Puritan Rules
Software makers revise their guidelines all the time, but nobody tightens the rules faster than developers subject to Apple’s increasingly stringent rules about what can be sold in its iPhone app store. And that includes Grindr, which just outlawed a whole slew of profiles with some new PG-rules. That’s gonna affect a lot of ya..
The GPS-based meet-hook-look-up app has, because of the App Store’s existing rules, never allowed members to display naked photos in their main profile pictures. (What transpires in private chat is up to you.) But updated rules go much father. Basically, the most risque you can go is board shorts; no Speedos.
* No bare skin below the waistline (hip bone area) or above the upper thighs can be shown.
* No underwear can be visible. Swimwear must follow the bare skin rule above.
* Pants and shorts must be worn normally, buttoned, and not pulled or hanging down.
* Hand or fingers cannot be down pants or pulling underwear outward.
* No images of anyone under 18 years of age.
* No copyrighted pictures or illustrations.
* No images that show semen (or any fluid made to look like semen or ejaculation) on anything in photo.
* No images of sexual acts, either real or illustrated.
* No photo that is sexually explicit or overly suggestive.
* Photos cannot be altered to hide sexual acts including a black box or blurred filters to hide sexual images such as touching of genitals by hand.
* No photos of frontal, back or side nudity.
* No nudity (particularly the genitals) covered up by a towel, hat or other means.
* No grabbing/holding or touching genitals or genital area.
* No pubic hair can be visible.
* No photos with sheer, or otherwise see-through or wet material below the waist.
* No outline of genitals through clothing will be allowed.
* No crotch area only, neither back nor front.
* No images that show suggestive or overly sexual poses.
* Photos cannot contain sex props and toys, including the use of fruits/vegetables.
* No images of illegal drug use and paraphernalia.
* No images of firearms or weapons.
* No photos of any obscene gestures and/or lewd behavior.
* You cannot display photos of violent acts to yourself, someone else, or animals.
* No image used to advertising your services, goods, websites, or events.
* No Image of any non-Grindr users, including celebrities.
* No profanity or curse words.
Also, you can’t say how big your dick is, that you’re a top or bottom, or whether you’re cut. Time to find some cute Japanese emojicons to send the message for you, eh?
So let’s see some profiles that, effective immediately, are inappropriate.
(Above Photo: BANNED: No grabbing your balls.)
Grindr was silly fun. So much for silly fun, right? Onward and downward, oh mighty censorious Apple.
On a side note, Google — in part because of the ridiculous micro-management of the closed platform police at Apple, is configuring its popular applications to mimic I-pad apps while not actually employing the apps at all.
Because nobody keeps a good cruiser, or coder, down for long.
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Maybe they started to realize that advertisers will NOT pair up with them, given their image. It all comes down to money folks. The only gay dating iPhone apps I see reputable companies paring with are GayCities, West Fourth, and possibly Skout. Goodluck Grindr.
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the new mobile website for ADAM4ADAM works just fine on my Nokia phone and I’m not subject to Steve Jobs’ tyrrany. I’m not trying to be an ad for A4A, I’m just tired of being told that adults can’t be allowed to act like adults in the company of other adults: life isn’t an ABC Family Channel movie, folks in Cupertino!
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oh cant wait for life after the boomers
you come in a baby and you go out a baby
who else thinks when you go into retirement or reach a certain age your voting rights should be taken away partly because you can be senial SO THERE GOES YOUR OPERATING LICENSE AS WELL !!!!
ONLY A MATTER OF TIME
WITHIN 15 – 20 YEARS TO BE PRECISE
SO SMILE ‘-)
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* No crotch area only, neither back nor front.
I have to ask….what’s a crotch in the back look like? I don’t have one.
Anyone?
:-)
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How ridiculous! I thought that Apple was a gay friendly company. I have seen untold numbers of apps that show female nudity to pander to straights but an app made for gay guys cruising limits nudity to stupid levels. It’s not as if the app isn’t directly related to sex why put these restrictions? It’s pathetic.
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I love these rules. I don’t mind a little PG cruising. There are plenty of web apps for the iPhone (I have some sort cuts on my phone) that are X rated. It’s nice have a little clean fun too. I’m all for choice. Apple is making the Gay a little more acceptable by letting some of us be clean and PG. We can still get down and dirty other places. Why do all gay sited have to be X rated anyway? I’m for social acceptable cruising.
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I don’t see how you people think you can just
use my brothers pic as an example!! You did not
have permission to do so!! This is slander and unless
you want a lawsuit I suggest you take the fckn pic
off!! Nobody gave you permission to post it up and only
to bash him and let people comment on the photo!!
You should have just sent him an email stating the pic
was inappropriate and to take it off.. So unless you want
a lawsuit I suggest you take it off or I will take action!!
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The one that should be banned is No. 17 (the picture number, not the comment above)! Way too much body mass for impressionable teenagers who might end up overeating if they used that guy as a role model.
BTW, regarding Comment No. 15, Apple is “gay friendly” in terms of how it treats employees, but for marketing reasons it wants all its iPhone apps to be G rated. If you personally find that awkward, dump the iPhone and use something else. Apple will (if enough people do that) get the message.
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No. 20 · Kevin wrote, “@Tracy: If one of the pictures is actually of your brother, he made it accessible to the public by putting it on grindr and has no legal standing to sue.”
Kevin, that is not true as a general statement. Just because someone makes a picture publicly available does not give others a right to republish the picture.
Unless the pictures were sent to QUEERTY by the people who own the copyright, there may be grounds for a lawsuit based on copyright infringement. The question would be whether QUEERTY’s use of the picture is allowed under the fair-use rules (not true in general but this was a news story about grindr having to ban particular images to keep Apple happy, making the images relevant to the story, so it is the sort of “gray area” where you want good legal advise).
There was a case a few years ago in San Francisco in which some porn-shop owner copied a picture of a scantily-clad or naked guy off of a European gay-oriented dating site, edited in a dildo, and put the picture outside his shop. Unfortunately for the porn-shop owner, the person whose picture it was lived in the neighborhood, saw the picture, and sued – and he had a solid case against the shop owner, not only for copyright infringement but because some of the copyright owner’s clients could have seen the picture and assumed that the copyright owner was modeling for a porn shop on the side. The porn-shop owner apparently thought the law was ridiculous, all the more so once he realized the consequences of his stupidity.
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@B:
This isn’t gray at all…
Using a picture put up for public perusal (unless copyrighted and even then usually allowed) in a news story is almost ALWAYS considered fair use. What you are referencing was someone using a modified picture for profit.
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No. 22 · AladinSane wrote, “Using a picture put up for public perusal (unless copyrighted and even then usually allowed) in a news story is almost ALWAYS considered fair use.”
It’s “almost ALWAYS” that is the question, isn’t it? That’s why news organizations have legal departments. :-) Aside from that, U.S. copyright law was changed at some point to be in sync with the rest of the world. You no longer need to explicitly copyright something – if you created it, you are automatically the copyright owner.
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I guess people don’t read more then the headline before commenting Apple didn’t add the other rules Grinder did and it applies to the app put on any smartphone not just the Iphone so maybe you should be pissed at Grinder not Steve Jobs who btw as the head cheese at apple has every right to dictate what content his “store” sells don’t like it ? shop somewhere else.
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@B: For someone that seems to understand copyright law so well, you don’t understand much else. News services, blogs, and whatever else have a legitimate right to use whatever media is placed into the public realm if they are reporting, commenting, or editorializing.
@damon459: Grammar is your friend. And some of us savvy enough will, that’s why we have phones running on Android….
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No. 24 · damon459 more or less said to blame grindr rather than Apple.
Apple has only itself to blame – industry publications have numerous complaints about iPhone apps being rejected for seemingly capricious reasons: http://www.infoworld.com/d/mob.....ection-773 , http://www.pcworld.com/article.....iable.html and http://www.pcworld.com/article.....e_for_that . When you read comments in industry publications like, “A new revolt seems to be brewing against Apple’s notoriously murky method of approving apps,” don’t be surprised at the consequences of that behavior.
If Apple won’t clearly state the criteria in a way that developers can clearly understand, developers will trade their guesses – writing an application can be a fair bit of work and nobody wants to do that if it is likely to be rejected before customers even see it.
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No. 25 · AladinSane wrote, “@B: For someone that seems to understand copyright law so well, you don’t understand much else. News services, blogs, and whatever else have a legitimate right to use whatever media is placed into the public realm if they are reporting, commenting, or editorializing.”
Looks like you can’t read. What I actually said was, “The question would be whether QUEERTY’s use of the picture is allowed under the fair-use rules (not true in general but this was a news story about grindr having to ban particular images to keep Apple happy, making the images relevant to the story, so it is the sort of “gray area” where you want good legal advise).”
Note the term “news story”. Then you have to ask if the pictures actually contributed anything to it or were put there simply to attract readers the way QUEERTY’s morning goods” ones do.
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No. 24 · damon459 more or less said to blaim grindr, not Apple.
The reality is that iPhone apps developers have been complaining about Apple’s somewhat vague and arbitrary rules about what applications will be allowed on an iPhone (Apple insists on complete control on what can be put on one). Some apps have recently been rejected for being too “racy” due to Apple changing its policies after receiving complaints.
Meanwhile, if Apple suddenly decides that grindr is “too racy”, grindr would be in trouble and might not survive. It isn’t surprising that grindr would decide to “play it safe” since the rules are so capricious and arbitrary. So it is legitimate to blame Apple in this case. You can’t argue that grindr applies the same rules to other smartphones – they are probably not set up to have different rules for different users depending on what phones those users own, and if you do that, QA testing becomes a lot more complicated, so basically Apple (or, if you wish, the fear of what Apple might do) is controlling the decision.
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@B: “Actually,” no you don’t. Anyone attempting to prove a violation of their copyright claim would have a very hard time trying to do so. Otherwise we wouldn’t have the media we do.
When you decide to represent your new client, I’m sure the defense will point you to any news outlet, magazine, website, or comedy show. Cheney and Palin would both love to hear your novel ideas on how to keep their failings off The Daily Show…
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And you can’t even have a pic of your chest !! Even simple flowers get wiped !! Some just want to be discreet and choose something simple and that goes by the rules and that gets wiped. But some guys go against the rules and those pics stay. I’ve seen asses and erect penises and soft ones and those stay up ?? WTF ….. I think grindr should be wiped !!!
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My brother the one being used as an example kray stated that grinder
states that nothing from his profile may be used
without consent!! So someone needs to get his
pic off this fckn site!! I don’t care what anyone else
comment on this page I want to get in contact with
someone!!!
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No. 28 · AladinSane wrote, “When you decide to represent your new client, I’m sure the defense will point you to any news outlet, magazine, website, or comedy show. Cheney and Palin would both love to hear your novel ideas on how to keep their failings off The Daily Show…”
Cheney and Palin are “public figures”. Look the term up. The rules are different for them than for private individuals.
But tell you what. Try collecting 17 songs that a major record company sells and put those on your web site along with an article about the record-company’s policies, and see what happens when you try to claim that it was for a “news” article so you can do whatever you want.
Also read the DMCA, grindr’s terms of service (which allows only non-commercial use of the service), and ask how QUEERTY got those pictures. If grindr does not provide a means to save the pictures, then was a copyright-protection scheme (no matter how weak) circumvented? Of did grindr simply give QUEERTY marketing pictures at some point for an article (maybe before the new policy was introduced).
There are in fact quite a few subtleties and finding out the hard way may be very unpleasant.
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i personally am dumping the app. i’ve had simple non suggestive pics, pics of flowers, pics of me jeep, no suggestive words or phrases and they still wipe my my profile. i had the same pics on it for a month and then wipe, gone. there’s another app that doesn’t charge monthly that i’m telling everyone to go to, which so far is following apples guidelines but not changing their own every five minutes. right now my pic on grinder is a “for sale” next its a woman in a burka, thats what i feel like, maybe showing just a pic of my chest was showing too much skin, but showing a rather large penis is ok. go figure, i’m done with grindr
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This is Grindr aka Joel Simkhai’s decision.
I see cock shots on purpll all the time. Lots of ass and undies on Gdß too. BoyAhoy/Skout doesn’t let nudity fly but it’s not nearly as ridiculous as Grindr’s new Disneyland Mormontown rules.
I had a photo banned once when I posted a photo of myself with a hot gogo boy I nailed the week before because I didn’t identify the second person the photo.
BoyAhoy auto-blocked my status update once when I asked if everyone else is getting hit on by hot 20something faraway cam whores as much as I am. Oops, I guess I shouldn’t have said that. So BoyAhoy/Skout wants to support all the interweb video hookers. Got it.
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No. 35 · Tracy wrote, “I don’t care what anyone else comment on this page I want to get in contact with someone!!!”
… http://www.queerty.com has a list of QUEERTY contacts. Send an email to whichever one you think is appropriate, but there is really nothing you can do as it isn’t your picture on display.
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Puritan Steve Job’s Apple iPhone Rules
Drop Apple & go to the Android phone’s HOT HOT Encountr app!
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I have been on Grindr for only two weeks and have had my text/pic censored about every three days.
Can’t figure out why my pic would be censored as I don’t even have nude pics. They’re all clothed. Maybe they don’t like my tattoos?
Then they love to censor my text. When I posted ‘no crybabies/whiners,’ they took it down. When I posted that I loved ‘guys into music and art,’ they took it down. When I finally had enough and put ‘censored’ as my name and ‘censored’ as my text, the took it down.
What a bunch of pussies.
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It really pisses me off! I have full-length towel – down to my towels – from about inch below my belly button, so I can show my six-pack I worked very hard on. And those bunch a-holes decide it’s lude. I’ve worn less out on the street!
I tried a few times not knowing what the rules are, because they don’t give any. And then I can’t logon anymore.
Fair does, if I’m showing my dick which I aint, or something heinious like a car crash victim, but I’m showing something I’m very comfortable with. Complete and utter a-holes.
And the worst of all, I’m using a BB – who don’t really about their apps! Maybe Apple need to be told i aint the 19th century – if people want to look at nudes, they’ve got the whole of the net. Bloody puritanical douchebags…grrrrrrhhhhh
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It really pisses me off! I have full-length towel – down to my toes – from about inch below my belly button, so I can show my six-pack I worked very hard on. And those bunch a-holes decide it’s lude. I’ve worn less out on the street!
I tried a few times not knowing what the rules are, because they don’t give any. And then I can’t logon anymore.
Fair does, if I’m showing my dick which I aint, or something heinious like a car crash victim, but I’m showing something I’m very comfortable with – and I’ve seen far, far worse on the streets of London, and various other cities. Complete and utter a-holes.
And the worst of all, I’m using a BB – who don’t really care about their apps! Maybe Apple need to be told i aint the 19th century – if people want to look at nudes, they’ve got the whole of the net. Bloody puritanical douchebags…grrrrrrhhhhh
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I remember being pissy that there wasn’t a Grindr for lesbians. Well, seems I had nothing to worry about. Should be thankful! These rules are silly. Ladies, Qrushr is much better than Grindr.
http://themostcake.co.uk/love-.....ating-app/
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“Grindr Xtra” is NOT Xtra.
I’ve had my unchanged profile for the past two weeks when I upgraded to “Grindr Xtra” on Dec. 26 and “suddenly” when i logged in was informed that my profile “was moderated.”
I thought Manhunt were a bunch of ad and photo Fascist Nazis but Grindr takes the cake on this one.
I will NOT be cancelling my membership by Jan. 26 and NEVER (as opposed to NOT) renewing if this is representative of the POOR CUSTOMER SERVICE at Grindr.
Please advise if anyone KNOWS of a voice contact number for their very inaccessible “customer service”
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Good this is insane :) has anybody looked at the pics on the uk grinder app? No nudity of course but underwears hands down the pants who cares. Lots of people have down their hands in their pants as a habit not to actually start jerkin off 24/7 I think that app just went crazy of well all the other one are coming up and will take over slowly but surely
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No matter what they do with their terms of service, they are known among the gays as the Manhunt for iphone…this new TOS is going to make a lot of their users upset.
And the name itself…. “Grindr” is suggestive. Like I’m really going to go on Grindr to find a coffee date. LOL!!!
There are far better alternative apps out there now.