Will Meetmarket Usher the End of Grindr's Dominance?, with Meetmarket Founder @donjackoghue

If you’ve spent any time on modern gay dating apps, you already know the feeling: the endless scrolling, the targeted ads, and the creeping suspicion that your digital social life has been entirely co-opted by corporate shareholders. On this episode of The Queer Pridecast, we talk about how the online spaces we use to meet, talk, and build community have been bought up by venture capital—and what it takes to reclaim them. Our guest is @donjackoghue (Calum Bowden), a Berlin-based anthropologist, tech researcher, and the founder of Meetmarket. Billed as a direct challenge to the dominance of platforms like Grindr and Sniffies, Meetmarket wants to radically rethink the business of digital intimacy. @donjackoghue sits down with us to explain the "gentrification of queer platforms," how the VC startup model inevitably leads to the "enshittification" of the user experience, and why ethical tech doesn't have to be boring.Episode Chapters:00:00:05 - The gentrification of queer platforms and the venture capital trap00:04:11 - What is "Steward Ownership" and how does it protect the app from corporate sellouts?00:06:51 - Building an ad-free experience with community-driven paywalls00:08:25 - How studying anthropology helps design better tech for human needs00:11:34 - Why standard apps are designed like slot machines to keep you hooked (and insecure) 00:15:52 - Decentralization, on-device encryption, and protecting queer users from surveillance 00:20:08 - Expanding digital intimacy: Bridging sex, flirting, and platonic chats00:23:08 - Ditching bots and spam with peer-to-peer verification00:25:34 - Making the app globally inclusive00:29:15 - So... is the ultimate goal to take Grindr down? Follow The Queer Pridecast on social media: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thequeerpridecastTiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thequeerpridecast