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One gay man in Bali explained that ‘we all just use Tinder now and there’s no way that the politicians are going to ban it’. Towards the end of 2016, however, it was starting to become many LGBT people’s app of choice. Until recently, Tinder was seen as an exclusively heterosexual dating app and rarely used by LGBT Indonesians. Favourites include Badoo, Grindr, Hornet, JackD, Skout, Wapa and WeChat.
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Transgender Indonesians use a lot of different dating apps, sometimes concurrently and sometimes consecutively.
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For instance, Wapa, Brenda and Line are the apps of choice for many lesbians while gay men often prefer Grindr, Scruff or Growlr. Many people who use online dating apps in Indonesia choose their apps based on sexual preference. Many fear that dating apps are promoting sexual ‘deviancy’ and a ‘gay lifestyle’. Blocking the apps thus deprives LGBT Indonesians of important opportunities to overcome the many difficulties they face as stigmatised sexual minorities. Online dating apps are also used to meet like-minded people, to form communities, and to disseminate information about sexual and reproductive health. Many fear that dating apps are promoting sexual ‘deviancy’ and a ‘gay lifestyle’.ĭating apps, however, are not just used by people wanting to hook up for casual sex. While the Police Criminal Investigation Agency (Bareskrim) asked the Ministry of Information to block these apps on the specific – but spurious – grounds that they were being used by paedophiles to pimp teenage boys out to men, it is important to recognise that such moves come on the back of the anti-LGBT crisis plaguing Indonesia since January 2016. Blocking the apps means that when people try to use them, empty profiles are loaded and no photos or links can be accessed. Recently, however, several dating apps, including Grindr, Blued and BoyAhoy, have been blocked. The prevalence of smartphones means dating apps such as Grindr and Wapa have had high usage among LGBT Indonesians. A government crackdown on dating apps is depriving LGBT Indonesians of a crucial resource