• LGBTQ+ apps are seeing a surge of interest after Meta's content moderation changes.
• Business Insider spoke with several founders building apps about the influx of users.
• The apps are focused on safety, privacy, and community amid tech industry shifts.

Between Meta's changes to its content-moderation policies and the TikTok ban, the past week has left many social-media users questioning where to go next.

For some LGTBQ+ users, that's resulted in a search for platforms specifically designed for their community that offer both connection and safety.

BI spoke with three founders building apps for the LGBTQ+ community who said they'd seen a spike in downloads and new users this month.

"We've just been trying to stop the product from combusting because we've been having so many people come in," said Callum Smith, founder of Collective, a queer community and dating app where users can share photos, songs, GIFs.

One user on Collective posted this week that they were "slowly looking for options to shift from Meta."

Meanwhile, Lex, a queer community and text-based app that was acquired by 9count in September, also noticed a spike beginning in the second week of January. Jennifer Lewis, Lex's CEO, said the app saw a 2x spike in downloads following Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's announcement that the company would alter its content-moderation and community standards.

Meta's changes included updating its Hateful Conduct policy, which now allows "allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like 'weird.'"

"This is the most anti-LGBTQ announcement that a social-media platform has made in recent memory," Josh Helfgott, an LGBTQ+ advocate and content creator, told BI last week.

Meta told BI that its content-moderation policies had been too far-reaching in years past, and its updates draw a line between offensive speech and potentially dangerous speech. The company also continues to prohibit attacks on protected characteristics, including dehumanizing speech, calls for harm, slurs, and more, as well as maintain its bullying and harassment policies.

In May 2024, GLAAD, a nonprofit advocacy organization for LGBTQ+ representation in media, published its fourth annual Social Media Safety Index report, which said that anti-LGBTQ "rhetoric and disinformation on social media translates to real-world offline harms."

"What I felt, time again, is that Big Tech doesn't really cater to us because they don't care about us," said Carmen Hernandez, founder of Freddie. The app describes itself as "for the sapphic and trans community to find friends, events, and lovers."

Designing apps with safety in mind

As LGBTQ+ apps welcome new users amid changes happening across tech, safety and privacy are top concerns.

Freddie, for example, is integrated with the encrypted messaging service Signal for security and data privacy.

"That need for safety is really what I think people are coming to Lex for," Lewis said. "What we've been doing since the acquisition by 9count has been building our backend moderation practices, trust and safety, user verification, bad actor banning."

On Collective, one safety measure (in addition to a zero policy for anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric) is its new user review process, which can take up to 24 hours and looks at a user's digital footprint across the web.

"We are creating a safe space for queer people, which means we have bad actors who want to get in and do bad things," Smith said.

Meta apps are still a necessity for visibility

For these LGBTQ+ apps, Meta platforms like Instagram are likely to remain crucial tools for getting in front of new users, despite the content-moderation changes.

Boyan Golden, founder of Purr, a social app for queer women, nonbinary, and trans people that will launch later this year, said the moment is a double-edged sword.

On one side, Golden hopes Meta's changes show the need for more queer-led social-networking platforms. At the same time, Meta platforms are still the largest channels Purr has for spreading its brand.

"You could rely on more traditional advertising methods, but you'd have nowhere the same reach," Golden told BI.

Collective, Lex, and Freddie also each have Instagram pages that are used as a marketing tool to direct users to their apps.

"I'm personally deleting all my Meta accounts on Friday," Hernandez said, but the separate account for Freddie will keep posting. "We're going to keep it as a beacon."

• Would you trust your friends to curate your dating-app matches?
• Several new "matchmaking" dating apps have launched in the past year, addressing dating-app fatigue.
• Startups like Sitch and Cheers are using AI and social connections to match users.

Matching and matches are everyday phrases in the online dating app lexicon. But matchmaking? Less so.

That may be changing.

A slew of new startups have launched in the past few months centered around matchmaking in the age of swipe fatigue.

Sitch, an AI-powered matchmaking app launched in New York in November. Cheers, an app that lets friends play matchmaker in a social-media feed, launched in October. Facebook Dating even launched a matchmaking feature last month.

Matchmaking is by no means a new invention. People have relied on matchmakers for centuries, and have sometimes been willing to pay thousands of dollars to be paired by one.

Tinder's cofounder and former CEO, Sean Rad, told Harry Stebbings on a September episode of the 20VC podcast that he had always imagined the dating app moving beyond swiping and into matchmaking. Rad described an ideal version of Tinder where the app was trained well enough to suggest the right "person for you," he said on the podcast.

Big dating apps have previously dabbled in matchmaking. In 2017, Hinge (just before it was acquired by Match Group in 2018) launched a stand-alone app called Matchmaker that let friends swipe for each other. It appears to have since shut down. Tinder, also owned by Match Group, launched a similar feature in 2023.

The current trend of new matchmaking apps generally splits into two categories: Either the users themselves are doing the matchmaking, or the app (typically built with AI) is matching users directly.

Friends and family become matchmakers

Handing over the reins to your dating profile to friends and family may seem daunting, but several startups are betting on this form of matchmaking.

Loop, founded by siblings Lian and Adam Zucker, is a "matchmaking app where everyone can set up their single friends," Lian said. Only two-thirds of the user base are singles, though, Lian told BI, explaining that the rest are friends and family members — or even professional or hobbyist matchmakers. Loop launched in 2023 and is currently free for all users.

An app that's set to launch in December, called Arrange, is built around a similar premise. Developed by former Fizz staffers Ram Chirimunj and Zoe Mazakas, the app will let users link their profiles with a "scout," likely a trusted friend or family member, who can talk with potential matches ahead of time and vet for compatibility.

"I thought back on all my relationships and realized that they were all made by friend introductions," Chirimunj said. "I wanted to see how we could bring that authenticity from the real world onto a dating platform."

But some startups that offer matchmaking tools, like Cheers, recognize many people don't want to spend all their time matching on behalf of their friends — no matter how much they love them. Sahil Ahuja, an ex-Instagram engineer and founder of Cheers, is trying to bridge the gap between dating and social media with a friend-of-a-friend social graph. The app, which he describes as a crossover between Hinge and Instagram, is free and currently invite-only.

On Cheers, if a user spots someone they may want to go on a date with, they can send a request to their mutual friend on the app to make the introduction. Non-dating users can also send profiles or start group chats with mutual friends to kick off a connection.

"Because it's more social, it lends itself well to solving this more organically and feeling more like how you would date in real life through friends," Ahuja told BI.

Let AI do the matchmaking for you

Some newer dating apps (like Hawk Tuah Girl's app called Pookie or Rizz) are riding the tailwinds of the AI hype with chatbots that help people flirt, troubleshoot dating conundrums, and connect.

Sitch, for example, offers an AI chatbot experience where users can ask questions about dating. Users can also answer a series of intimate questions about their interests, values, and backgrounds that contribute to a profile within the app. The app then offers users potential "setups," where the AI will introduce two users.

"We've tried to replicate the exact human flow of matchmaking," Sitch cofounder Nandini Mullaji — who has experience in matchmaking friends of friends IRL — told BI.

Sitch launched in November exclusively in New York — but there's still a waitlist to get approved. Users can then pay for "setups," which cost $150 for three pairings.

Amori, a dating-advice app with characters users can chat with, is also experimenting with its own form of matchmaking using a personal assistant (though it isn't live within the app yet).

"We're trying to nail down the dating advice side of it with the coach," Amori's founder, Alex Weitzman, told BI. Down the line, Amori's AI dating coach will help users find potential matches through the app.

Will it really work?

Despite the string of new apps, New York City matchmaker Nick Rosen said he thinks it won't be easy for friends and family to find users a perfect match.

Rosen said he typically works with a roster of 20 to 30 people at a time and keeps a rolodex of 3,000 available singles in New York City for his clients to meet.

When he starts working with a client, he does an extensive intake of a person's romantic history, which he says is an advantage of a professional matchmaker. Friends and family know you well, but maybe they don't know the entirety of your dating history and scars.

"People open up to me like a therapist," Rosen said.

Though friends and family might be excited at first to play Cupid, the exhausting reality of helping someone find love can wear off, Rosen said.

Still, he thinks matchmakers need to change with the times.

"If we want to make matchmaking more approachable and cooler to people, we need to go and start having our own apps," he said.