October 1, 2015 | Sex & Society

Grindr and Tinder react to AIDS Healthcare Foundation billboards

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) -- best known for its initiative to make the production of bareback porn illegal in California -- is again attracting attention in its bid to raise awareness of STI's. Its latest salvo in the war against sexually transmitted infections is a billboard campaign that explicity links popular hook-up aps Grindr and Tinder to chlamydia and gonorrhea. 

Not surprisingly, Grindr and Tinder are upset.

Grindr dropped AHF as a paid advertiser, saying, “We were surprised at the approach [the foundation] took, and paused the campaign in order to speak with them and assess our relationship.”

Tinder has demanded that the foundation remove all references to the hookup app from their billboards and that it cease making “false and disparaging statements against Tinder.”

“They’re tone deaf,” Michael Weinstein, president of AHF, told the Guardian. “It would have been much wiser for them to say that they’re concerned about their customers and look forward to working with us to help people get the checkups that they need.”

Currently, there are 12 billboards and 45 bus bench ads in Los Angeles. The AHF says it plans to expand the campaign to New York and south Florida.

Perhaps Mr. Weinstein should have taken his own advice. Would it not have more effective to approach the hookup aps and work together to insure that their users are aware that sexually active people should get tested for STDs once in a while?

We wonder if this was a calculated decision to get free publicity. Is Michael Weinstein the Donald Trump of sexual health?