Tinder is lucah inenglishattempting to get more in step with the transgender community.
Speaking at the Code Conference on Thursday, Tinder CEO Sean Rad revealed that the company is about to roll out new features in the popular dating app that will account for gender besides male and female, while he couldn't yet get into specifics.
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For users who are transgender, Tinder has been tricky — if not overtly dangerous and risky — to navigate in its current form. Trans users have been banned from the app after being reported by non-trans users who match with them. Others trans users report experiencing harassment on the app, or even fearing meeting up with users who might be unaware of or hostile to their gender status.
For banned users, Tinder has historically reviewed and reinstated accounts that did not violate community guidelines. But the app hasn't catered to its transgender community, said Rad. It currently only allows members to identify as either male or female, operating under the assumption that all users are cisgender, or identify with their sex at birth.
"It makes it hard to find what you're looking for," said Rad.
Tinder, however, started working with GLAAD, according to Rad, on how to modify the Tinder experience. The result is that, within a month or so, Tinder users will see an update that, Rad said, "will solve this for the transgender community."
But whether new proposal to have trans-inclusive gender options will positively impact the trans community remains to be seen.
Identifying yourself as transgender on a platform known to some extent for gender-based harassment, after all, still comes with risk. And some transgender users may still want to identify themselves as male or female without specifying they are transgender.
While Rad couldn't get into specifics of what the feature will look like, he did say that the set of new features will let people more accurately specify what they are looking for and, perhaps more importantly, "let people be who they are."
Mashable's Katie Dupere contributed to this report.
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