No more showing off your guns on this dating app.While there’s still no action from Congress on gun control in the wake of the school shooting in south Florida that took the lives of 17 people, a dating app is taking matters into its own hands. Bumble, which has 29 million users, announced Monday that they’d be banning photos of guns on user profiles.“We were founded with safety, respect, and kindness in mind,” the company said in a statement posted to Instagram. “As mass shootings continue to devastate communities across the country, it’s time to state unequivocally that gun violence is not in line with our values, nor do these weapons belong on Bumble.”Whitney Wolfe Herd, the app’s founder and chief executive, told the New York Times that the move wasn’t a direct response to complaints from users, but a move in line with the company’s ethos: They’re also planning to donate $100,000 to the March for Our Lives protest, scheduled for March 24 in Washington, D.C.Read: This Is the Political Aftermath of the Parkland Shooting“Compared to what’s going on with Facebook and Twitter, we take a very proactive approach,” Herd, Bumble’s founder and chief executive. “If I could police every other social platform in the world, I would.”Herd also told the Times that 5,000 moderators around the world will scour photos on the app to filter out photos with guns. Bumble already employs moderators responsible for keeping nudity and violent images off the app, and this process, Herd said, will work much the same way their other moderation works.There’s one exception to the gun ban: Users in military or law enforcement uniform will still be able to flaunt their guns.A co-founder of the pioneering app-based dating site Tinder, Herd sued the company in 2014, alleging that her co-founder, Justin Mateen, sexually harrassed her. Bumble, the company she founded and runs, competes directly with her former employer: As of November of last year, Bumble has been growing at a rate of 70 percent, year-over-year, according to Forbes. Tinder, meanwhile, had 77 million people on its app, but was growing at a rate of only 10 percent.Conservatives have been complaining about prejudice on the dating apps, noting that many of the people looking to find love online post that they’re not interested in meeting Trump voters.For those who want to meet the gun lover of their dreams, dateagunlover.com is still up and running.
Cover image: Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd speaks onstage during OZY FEST 2017 Presented By OZY.com at Rumsey Playfield on July 22, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Ozy Fusion Fest 2017)
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