Grindr Moderators Facing Mental Health Crisis

Grindr, one of the most popular dating apps for gay men, is not free from having its share of concerning users. Often, when someone is reported for abuse of the site’s terms and services, the report goes to a human member of the moderation team. The moderation team for Grindr, PartnerHero, outsources moderators for just such a job.

The majority of reports are relatively mundane, but there is a percentage of reports that have the most despicable of content within them. When these reports go to the moderation team, it can have a massive toll on those who have to look at the reports. In many cases, former and current employees said that they suffered from symptoms of depression, anxiety, and PTSD.

These workers are often too scared to quit for fear of being ostracized by other outsourcing companies, or in one worker’s case, simply not being able to function as they used to after leaving the job. One former worker, known here as Ana, had so much anxiety in doing basic tasks that she passed out twice.

Among many other issues such as harassment, murder, bigotry, drug dealing, and other horrible things that both users and moderators have to face, Grindr is a hub for homophobic hate crimes such as blackmail. While a one-off exposure to something awful can be dealt with in a healthy manner, outsourced Grindr moderators are not given good enough mental health benefits or a proper support system, and they are facing these things multiple times on a daily basis.

One former moderator, known as Ale, commented on being told to just speak to HR when the job became too much to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, “This person had just graduated from a psychology major; they had no experience providing therapy, and certainly no experience with things as sensitive as PTSD.” Ale had previous mental health conditions, and the HR representative in question was inexperienced.