reputations

Grindr Asks That You Not Connect Its Brand to Murderous Rampages

An assault—especially one ending in murder—is a bad thing to have connected to your  social-media app. Which explains why Grindr is distancing itself from a fatal attack connected to a gay social-media app.

After a Vancouver sexual assault involving a 15-year-old boy and a 54-year-old man, who police say met using Grindr, comes word that Mark Woodland, a 54-year-old Phoenix man, was beaten and stabbed to death, allegedly by suspect Tommy Reed, 19, after meeting “on an unknown social network.”

That’s how AZFamily.com phrased its report (which has been edited since it originally was posted). Though it didn’t mention Grindr by name, the blogosphere jumped to its own conclusions and fingered Grindr.

Not kosher, says Team Grindr, which has been firing off notices to multiple blogs, including this one.

After Queerty posted the Vancouver story, Grindr founder Joel Simkhai wrote us to say, “Grindr has a very strict 18 years -and-over terms-of-use policy that all users of our service must agree to. Additionally we actively monitor for potential violations of this policy and bar anyone who violates its terms. We voluntarily have this policy in place to help protect the safety of minors.”

But the beloved app has been even more aggressive about the Arizona murder: Multiple blogs report they’ve received notices (like the one shown here) asking all reports to scrub references to Grindr.

GorgeousBoys.com removed any mention of the app from its item, as did the Phoenix New Times, in all likelihood to avoid accusations of libel.

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