Context

A counterexample is useful because it proves alternatives exist, not because it identifies a morally pure company. Better privacy practice can coexist with security failures, limited remedies or other forms of exclusion.

Evaluating platforms mechanism by mechanism avoids replacing criticism with brand loyalty. The question is not which company is good, but which specific decisions reduce or reproduce harm.

Argument

Jack’d, acquired by Perry Street in 2019, paid $240,000 to approximately 7,000 users in a settlement with the New York Attorney General over a security flaw that left private photographs accessible. Scruff and Jack’d disabled their ethnicity filters in June 2020, following Grindr, and critics noted at the time that removing a filter is the minimum available action rather than an intervention in the sorting itself. The independent alternative is better on the specific mechanisms named here and is not thereby clean.

The settlement concerns conduct that preceded or overlapped the acquisition, while the later privacy choices deserve recognition on their own terms. Holding both facts together prevents a common analytical mistake: treating one improvement as evidence that the whole system has been repaired.

Evidence

Key finding

Jack’d, acquired by Perry Street in 2019, paid $240,000 to approximately 7,000 users in a settlement with the New York Attorney General over a security flaw that left private photographs accessible.

Implication

Ethical refusal must be evaluated mechanism by mechanism, not treated as innocence.