Grindr Agrees To £26 Million UK Settlement Over Privacy Claims Involving HIV Status Data

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Grindr has agreed to pay £26 million to settle a UK lawsuit brought by thousands of users who alleged the app shared highly sensitive personal information, including HIV status, with advertising companies.

The settlement brings an end to a two-year legal battle involving around 12,000 claimants (Guardian).

But there is an important distinction.

Grindr disputes the allegations, and the settlement includes no admission or finding of liability.

The case relates to what the company describes as historical data practices from before 2020.

What The Users Alleged

The lawsuit was filed at the High Court of England and Wales in April 2024 by law firm Austen Hays on behalf of Grindr users.

The claim alleged that sensitive personal information had been shared in ways that breached users’ privacy rights.

Among the information at issue was HIV status, one of the most sensitive health details a person might choose to disclose on a dating app.

For an app used heavily by gay and bisexual men, that detail makes the case particularly significant.

Many users may choose to share intimate information on a profile because they believe it will help them navigate dating, sex and relationships more safely and openly.

That expectation also depends on trust about where that information goes.

£26 Million Settlement

Under the agreement, Grindr will pay £13 million by the end of this year and another £13 million by the end of March next year.

If the total were divided equally among the 12,000 claimants, the average payment would be about £2,167 each.

Actual compensation may differ depending on how the settlement is distributed.

Grindr said the case concerned “historical data practices before 2020.”

The company also said the settlement contains no admission of liability and that it continues to dispute the allegations.

At the same time, Grindr acknowledged what it described as distress and loss of trust expressed by some UK users over that period.

The company says it has overhauled its privacy programme since 2020 and remains committed to transparency, user control and responsible data practices.

Why HIV Status Matters So Much

This is not simply a dispute over ordinary advertising data.

HIV status can carry deeply personal, medical and social consequences.

For queer people in particular, there is a long history of stigma attached to HIV and AIDS.

That makes control over who sees that information especially important.

A dating app asking users to trust it with something that sensitive also takes on a responsibility to make clear how the information is handled.

The controversy around Grindr’s data practices did not begin with this lawsuit.

In 2018, the company announced it would stop sharing users’ HIV status with third-party companies after researchers in Norway revealed that such data had been shared.

Then, in 2021, Norway’s data protection authority fined Grindr 65 million Norwegian kroner for separate violations of data-protection rules.

That fine was later upheld by Norway’s court of appeal.

A Bigger Question About Queer Digital Privacy

Grindr has become part of everyday life for millions of gay, bisexual and queer men around the world.

That makes cases like this about more than one app.

They raise a much broader question about what queer people are asked to trade in exchange for convenience, connection and visibility online.

Location.

Sexuality.

Relationship preferences.

Health information.

All of those details can become extraordinarily sensitive when combined.

And users may reasonably expect that information shared in a dating context will not quietly travel somewhere else.

The £26 million settlement does not establish that Grindr committed the wrongdoing alleged by the users.

But it does show how seriously questions of privacy and trust are being treated when highly sensitive personal data is involved.

For queer users, that trust matters for a very simple reason.

Opening up to another person is one thing.

Opening up to an advertising ecosystem is something else entirely.

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Brendan Blumer and Salvatore Spano Married in Sardinia With Coldplay Performing

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American billionaire Brendan Blumer has now married his Italian partner Salvatore “Tore” Spano in Sardinia — and after days of speculation, one of the biggest wedding rumors has turned out to be true.

Coldplay really did perform.

What originally sounded like the kind of celebrity-wedding gossip that becomes less believable every time it is repeated has now been backed up by multiple Italian reports. Journalists covering the final day of the celebrations say the multi-day wedding festivities concluded aboard the Agata ferry in a bay on the Costa Smeralda, where Chris Martin and Coldplay performed for the newlyweds and their guests.

And Coldplay were not the only high-profile names now attached to the party. Current reporting also places Rita Ora and Kygo at the Agata celebration, while Giorgia, Laura Pausini and Marco Mengoni were all part of the wider wedding festivities over the course of the weekend (La Nuova Sardegna).

That gives the story a much firmer shape than the earlier rumor cycle, which had thrown around names like Lady Gaga, Jeff Bezos, George Clooney and Sam Altman without much solid confirmation behind them. At this point, Coldplay is confirmed. Rita Ora and Kygo also appear to be safely in the “actually there” category. Lady Gaga, however, still does not have the same level of credible documentation and should probably stay out of the final version of the story.

And while the scale of the wedding was obviously spectacular, the most charming details are not really the celebrity ones.

Around 300 guests reportedly gathered in San Pantaleo, where the village square was transformed into something resembling a traditional Sardinian festa. There were local artisans, regional food, folk costumes and a heavy emphasis on local culture rather than simply billionaire excess. One of the standout details from the reporting is that Blumer and Spano also stepped outside the restricted celebration area to greet older women from the village who were sitting outside their homes and trying to follow the festivities from a distance.

Then there was the Marco Mengoni moment.

According to Italian coverage, an older local woman told Spano she was a big fan of the singer. Spano disappeared for a moment and then returned with Mengoni so she could meet him and take a picture. It is a very small detail, but it does a lot to make the whole event feel warmer and more human than the original version of the story, which risked reading like little more than rich people doing extravagant things on boats.

There were, of course, still extravagant things on boats.

The wedding cake alone reportedly stretched 16 metres and weighed 190 kilos. Giorgia performed in San Pantaleo, and Spano reportedly joined her on stage. Laura Pausini performed at Vesper the night before. By the end of the weekend, the guest list, the music lineup and the scale of the production had all made one thing clear: this was not a quiet destination wedding.

But it was also, unmistakably, a gay wedding story.

Not just because two men got married, but because the whole thing combined spectacle, romance, chosen family, cultural detail and a slightly absurd level of fabulousness in a way that feels instantly legible to a B-Gay audience.

Brendan Blumer and Salvatore Spano are now married.

Coldplay really did play the wedding.

And somewhere in Sardinia, a village got a wedding cake the size of a small monument.

Congratulations to the grooms. ❤️🌈💍

📷 @brendan.blumer___


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They Made a Movie About Love — Then Realized Their Own Relationship Was Over

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Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi built one of Spain’s most recognizable creative partnerships while also building a life together.

For more than a decade, the filmmakers known collectively as Los Javis were partners both personally and professionally.

Then, while making their new film La Bola Negra, the line between the story they were writing and the relationship they were living started to blur.

The film follows gay men across different periods of Spanish history and explores love, identity, desire and the question of what remains when a relationship changes.

At some point during the writing and production process, Calvo and Ambrossi realized that some of that uncertainty was coming from somewhere very close to home.

The Relationship Was Already Changing

The pair had been together since 2012.

By the time they began working on La Bola Negra, they had spent years sharing both a romantic relationship and a highly successful creative life.

But during the making of the film, they deliberately began writing ambiguity into one of the central male relationships.

That uncertainty reflected doubts they were already experiencing themselves.

Ambrossi has since explained that the creative process opened a door they needed to walk through.

It helped them confront the fact that they were no longer in love in the same way.

The film did not cause the breakup.

It helped them understand what was already happening.

A Breakup Without a Villain

Calvo and Ambrossi separated during filming.

But the end of the romantic relationship did not destroy the bond between them.

They have continued working together.

They still speak about each other with affection.

And they now describe their relationship in a different way: family.

That may be the most interesting part of the story.

For so many couples, especially public ones, a breakup is expected to come with blame, distance, or a dramatic collapse.

Los Javis have described something more complicated.

The romantic relationship ended.

The history, trust and creative connection did not.

More Space, Not Less Connection

Ambrossi has said that having more individual space has actually made their relationship healthier.

That does not mean the split was easy.

It means they were able to recognize that staying together romantically was no longer the right shape for what they had become.

And instead of forcing the old version of the relationship to continue, they allowed it to change.

That shift also gave each man more room to exist outside the identity of Los Javis.

The creative partnership remains.

But the personal relationship now has different boundaries.

When Art Turns Into a Mirror

There is something almost too cinematic about two filmmakers making a movie about love and uncertainty while slowly realizing that their own relationship was moving toward an ending.

But the important distinction is that they did not invent the breakup through the film.

The film gave them a language for something they were already feeling.

That is what makes the story resonate beyond celebrity gossip.

Sometimes people understand their lives by talking.

Sometimes they understand them by leaving.

And sometimes, apparently, they understand them by writing a movie.

Los Javis After Love

Calvo and Ambrossi are still making work together.

They are still connected.

They are still Los Javis.

Just not in exactly the same way.

Their relationship ended, but the life they built did not suddenly become meaningless.

That history remains part of who they are.

And so does the creative partnership that grew out of it.

La Bola Negra may be about love, uncertainty and what happens when people change.

For its creators, making it became part of answering those same questions in real life.

The love story changed.

The partnership survived.

And sometimes that is its own kind of ending. ❤️

📷 @javviercalvo

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Jack Baker and Michael McConnell Just Hit 55 Years Married ❤️

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Jack Baker and Michael McConnell got married on September 3, 1971.

Not 2015.

Not 2004.

1971.

Yesterday marked 55 years since their wedding, and the fact that the couple are still together makes an already remarkable piece of LGBTQ+ history feel even more extraordinary.

Their story began in the 1960s, when Jack and Michael met and fell in love.

By 1967, the relationship had become serious.

Michael wanted more than a private promise between two men.

He wanted marriage.

“Find a Way for Us to Get Married”

That challenge became part of the course of Jack’s life.

He went to law school and began looking closely at the rules that supposedly prevented two men from marrying.

Their first attempt to obtain a marriage license in Hennepin County, Minnesota, was denied.

The couple challenged that rejection in a case that became Baker v. Nelson.

But the legal fight did not end there.

Jack and Michael eventually found another path.

They applied for a license in Blue Earth County.

And on September 3, 1971, they married.

University of Minnesota sources describe their ceremony as the first legal same-sex wedding in the United States.

Two Grooms in 1971

The wedding itself contained details that would feel perfectly ordinary at a gay wedding today.

In 1971, they were anything but ordinary.

A Methodist minister named Roger Lynn performed the ceremony.

Friends helped create a wedding cake topped with two grooms.

Jack and Michael also had rings engraved with messages that could be read as “Jack loves Mike” and “Mike loves Jack.”

They were not waiting for the rest of the country to decide whether their relationship deserved to exist.

They had already decided for themselves.

A Marriage That Never Ended

The decades that followed would bring enormous legal and cultural changes for same-sex couples in the United States.

Marriage equality would not become the law nationwide until the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015.

By then, Jack and Michael had already been together for nearly half a century.

Their own marriage was never dissolved.

And in 2018, a Minnesota court declared their 1971 marriage valid.

That legal recognition mattered.

But by then, the couple had already spent decades proving something no court could create for them.

They had built a life together.

55 Years Later

It is easy to tell Jack and Michael’s story as legal history.

It is also easy to turn them into symbols of a movement.

Both are true.

But the most moving part of their story may be much simpler.

Two men fell in love when the idea of marrying another man was almost unimaginable to most Americans.

Michael wanted a lifelong commitment.

Jack helped find a way.

They stood together at a wedding ceremony in 1971.

They exchanged rings.

Their friends put two grooms on the cake.

And 55 years later, they are still together.

Long before same-sex marriage became a national reality, Jack Baker and Michael McConnell were already living one.

Two grooms.

1971.

Still side by side. ❤️🌈

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R.K. Russell and Corey O’Brien Launch Their First Show Together ❤️

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R.K. Russell and Corey O’Brien have been together since 2019.

Now, seven years into their relationship, they have finally found the project that made becoming coworkers seem like a good idea. 😂

The couple have launched The Parking Guy, a new short-form comedy series created for Instagram Reels, TikTok and YouTube Shorts.

Corey stars.

R.K. created and directs.

And both men serve as executive producers.

It is their first professional creative collaboration as a couple.

Two Very Different Public Careers

R.K. first became widely known through football.

The former NFL player made history in 2019 when he publicly came out as bisexual, becoming the first NFL player to do so.

Since then, he has built a career that stretches far beyond sports, including writing, advocacy and creative work.

Corey, meanwhile, has built a large following through comedy, social commentary and videos that frequently mix queer culture, politics and sharp observational humor.

That makes The Parking Guy a slightly unexpected meeting point for two people whose public careers have developed in very different directions.

So What Is The Parking Guy?

The scripted comedy follows Doug, an extremely enthusiastic Los Angeles parking enforcement officer played by Corey.

What should be routine encounters over parking tickets quickly spiral into increasingly ridiculous situations.

The series premiered September 3 and is being released directly on social platforms rather than through a traditional television network or streamer.

That format also makes sense for a cast and creative team with audiences already deeply rooted in short-form video.

The guest-star lineup includes Margaret Cho, Nico Santos, Willam Belli, Alec Mapa, Dewayne Perkins, Alexandra Shipp, Rachael Harris and others.

So this is not simply a couple pointing a phone at each other in the living room and calling it a series.

They have assembled a genuinely impressive little comedy world around it.

Why It Took Seven Years

Both R.K. and Corey have said they had wanted to work together eventually.

What they did not want was to force a couples project simply because they happened to be dating.

Corey has said they were waiting for something both of them genuinely cared about.

R.K. has also explained that previous attempts to collaborate had not quite clicked.

With The Parking Guy, the timing finally did.

The idea worked.

Their creative roles made sense.

And the project reflected where both men had arrived professionally after years of building separate careers.

From Couple to Creative Team

There is something charming about the fact that they waited this long.

R.K. and Corey have spent seven years building a life together before deciding to build a show together.

Now Corey gets to be the face of the chaos while R.K. directs it from behind the camera.

For a former NFL trailblazer and a queer comedian, that feels like a pretty natural next chapter.

Dating for seven years is one thing.

Surviving your first production together may be the real relationship milestone. 😂❤️🌈

📷 @rkrelentless @coreyobrien

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