Dating app Grindr to remove ethnicity filter in solidarity with Black Lives Matter movement

LGBTQ dating app Grindr will remove the "ethnicity filter" from the next version of its app, showing solidarity with Black Lives Matter movement against police brutality against black women and men.

The app currently lets people filter potential matches according to their age, height, weight and ethnicity.

Announcing the change, Grindr said it had a "zero-tolerance policy for racism and hate speech" on its platform.

Several companies have posted messages of their own featuring the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter following six consecutive days of protests across the United States.

The events were sparked by the killing of George Floyd - a black man who died after a white officer continued kneeling on is neck even after he had pleaded that he could not breathe.

While some Grindr users welcomed the removal of the filter, others said the company had taken too long to implement the change, and had done the "bare minimum".

The ethnicity filters have been controversial for years, but they went unchanged even as Grindr launched an anti-racism campaign on the platform in 2018.

Grindr is not the only LGBT dating app to allow filtering by race. Other apps, including The League and Hinge, allow users to filter out people of certain ethnicities as well.

However, the spotlight will now move to others that have yet to take a similar stance.