Popular gay hookup app, Grindr, might soon be offering users the ability to search through profiles using an HIV status filter.

 

Currently the news is merely speculation, though some users have started receiving an in-app survey asking how they feel about being able to review hook-up results based on whether a user is HIV+ or not.

 

David Myles from the Université de Montréal shared screenshots of the survey. Questions included: “What is your current HIV status?” and “How would you feel if Grindr allowed you to filter the guys you see by HIV status?”.

 

 

“Would the HIV filter [make positive members] invisible to others whose HIV status didn’t match their preferences…like an automatic block function?" asked Daniel Reeders, who writes for the blog, Bad Blood. “If it did, and enough HIV-negative people used it, it really would constitute a form of digital quarantine that leaves people with HIV outcast and invisible."

 

There is, of course, also the matter of a person's right to privacy. What do you think?