Catfishing, or pretending to be someone else, is a major problem for anyone who uses dating apps, be it gay, straight, or other as it can wreak havoc on the lives of honest users.
In April, for example, a man sued Grindr after his ex-lover created a fake profile and invited more than a thousand men to his house for sex. While this is one of the most extreme examples of someone creating fake profiles to impersonate someone else and having it go to court, catfishing happens all the time on a smaller scale and preys upon users’ vulnerabilities.
A safer, more transparent gay dating app
By taking advanced security measures that put an end to out-dated or photoshopped images, along with a variety of privacy features, a new dating app for gay and bisexual men has just launched in Israel, Brazil, and Spain, with European and North American roll-outs coming soon.
Hookd promises to be a safer and more private dating app that also works more organically than its competitors.
One of the central features is the limiting of photo uploads to the in-app camera, which improves safety and puts an end to the problem of not only catfishing, but of users who post pictures of their six-packs from 10 years back but who are now bloated to the size of kegs.
“We realized that dating apps have a variety of serious issues, but that these issues are quite simple and do not necessarily need to exist,” said Founder Daniel Joseph.
Unlike other gay dating apps, Hookd works on a real-time basis, mimicking social media news feeds. The app functions with a real-time feed, in which users post what it is specifically they are looking for while other users reply to the requests with instant messages.
Daniel Joseph, Founder of Hookd
This approach saves time and ensures that interests align, and being able to directly reply to these requests in private also helps to prevent unsolicited encounters.
“That is why we developed Hookd which uses more intuitive dating models with the mission to offer an engaging and safe online dating alternative,” added Joseph.
To give a sense of how serious online impersonation is, and how it not only affects the LGBT community, but everyone regardless of sexual orientation, one can find innumerable examples online.
If you want insensitive and outlandish articles that actually do more to exploit victims than help them, read The Sun.
However, to get a feel of the real impact, online dating impersonators can scam people out of not just their dignities, but their money and their safety as well.
Forbes reported just this week that a woman in Texas gave her entire life savings to someone she met online who later disappeared and left her utterly devastated.
With Hookd, online dating safety and privacy are at the forefront, but it also engaging and fun, and is aimed at lessening the risks of being trapped by impostors.
As Joseph says, Hookd “creates an environment of transparency for the users which aligns to the new social norms of gay casual online dating,” and it “offers a totally new, effective and efficient way for men to meet whilst still giving much importance to privacy and safety.”
