At Tinder, we’re always working to make it easier to connect with new people. And, as I begin my third year as CEO, I want to acknowledge that using our app hasn’t always been easy for everyone.

We strive to create a place where people everywhere can be who they are and love who they love. A few years ago, we made strides in the industry by expanding gender identities to be more inclusive for everyone on Tinder – and we are continuously making changes and improvements to help all members feel recognized and welcomed when connecting on our platform. With this in mind, I want to address the transgender community and share the steps we’ve taken toward inclusivity across our entire business – from improving our product, to training our people, to using our platform to tell real stories from members of the community.

Improving our product experience

Today, you can add the term that best reflects your gender identity on Tinder by using our feature, More Genders. And while many successful matches have been made, and surely more minds opened, our trans members have been very vocal about: the banning of our transgender members, especially transgender women.

When developing our More Genders feature: we decided not to give Tinder members the option to filter out profiles of trans people. We stand by that decision. We will always do what we can to foster an inclusive community on Tinder. However, it came with some very disappointing, unforeseen consequences. Trans people continue to be reported at higher rates by cisgender members simply for being who they are. Although our intention was to be more inclusive, we understand many members of the trans community have felt the opposite. When we recently started offering support via Twitter, this became especially clear; and, we’ve taken immediate steps toward improving our processes:

• Leveraging our support channels to directly engage with the community more quickly
• Redirecting these types of reports to our escalations team
• Deploying new in-app warnings to provide more feedback about which Guidelines people may be violating – rather than banning profiles

Since implementing these changes, we’ve been able to meaningfully increase the number of trans people who remain on Tinder despite unwarranted reports. I’m encouraged by the progress we’ve made, and am dedicated to continuing our assessment and refinement of Tinder’s reporting structure. In the meantime, we encourage people to make use of the More Genders feature. As a reminder, when you choose to self-identify on Tinder, it does not mean that you share this information to other members unless you choose to. As always, if you believe that your account has been banned due to reports about your gender identity, please contact us at [email protected].

Educating our team

We are working to better integrate inclusivity into every part of Tinder. This starts with our own employees, and I’m happy to share that we’ve completed trainings with Speaking of Transgender for our leadership team and people managers. We will be implementing training for everyone across the company in 2020, as well.

Sharing more stories

Unfortunately, simply being a transgender person is still stigmatized in our society – and that can make dating difficult. We want to do our part to provide more trans representation and visibility by sharing stories of transgender people. We’re releasing new videos for our Tinder Inclusivity series from Swipe Life that explore what it means to identify as trans, and the dating experiences ( both good and bad) that trans people experience.

We are sincerely committed to making Tinder a place where all people feel welcome – and will update you as we continue to make improvements across our company and within our global community.

-Elie