Can Tinder fix the dating problem it helped destroy?

Tender Lauren made Grauer feels like a delinquent historian.

While watching videos on YouTube last month, a New York talent marketer received an ad for “Double Date,” a new feature launched by the dating app that allows users to pair their profiles with friends to swipe on other paired matches.

Grauer was shocked by the news. Four years ago, she was thinking of doing the same thing by creating a dual profile for herself and her boyfriend. This idea got her kicked out of the app.

“The reason I’m banned from Tinder is because of what they’re advertising now,” Grauer says in a TikTok video. “I don’t want to go back. You don’t need to unblock me, it’s okay. But you made me feel like a criminal.” (The company’s community guidelines prohibit account sharing.)

Double Date is one of more than a dozen features announced by Tinder as part of its ongoing rebranding under its latest CEO, Spencer Rascoff, who wants to create a new identity for the world’s most popular dating app around low-pressure social connections.

Unlike all the other dating apps that struggle to engage, Tinder has uniquely struggled to innovate in an area that was previously considered the norm. Although Grindr launched in 2009 as the first geofencing app — specifically designed to cater to gay people — it was Tinder, which arrived in 2012, that completely overhauled online dating. Swiping for love was a hit among love-obsessed singles, and booming apps, including Bumble, Field, and Raya, flooded the market in the years that followed.

By 2016, Tinder had an estimated 50 million users and was the largest dating app in the United States, with a 25 percent market share. Over time, researchers began to treat digital flirting like a game, scrolling through until they reached the final level. Vanity gallery He once called it “the dawn of the apocalypse.” In the last quarter of 2025, Tinder member salaries fell by 8 percent, to 8.8 million.

This month, during a media event at the El Rey Theater in Los Angeles, Rascoff officially reintroduced Tinder to the public. While swipes were once a measure of success, the company’s standards have changed when it comes to user satisfaction. “Just getting games is not the goal,” Rascoff said of changing priorities. “People crave connection. Humans need humans.”

Tinder, like almost every other dating app on the market, is betting on AI to not only innovate but also rebuild trust with users. But could the app revitalize the dating scene that many say it has destroyed?

In addition to the profile redesign, two of its new products include Astrology Mode, which pairs people based on their compatibility with zodiac signs, and Chemistry, an AI-powered tool that analyzes a user’s camera roll to learn more about their interests and personality. The company, which suffered an alleged data breach in January, says it does not store data analyzed from images.

Tinder is also making AI upgrades to Are you sure? feature, which alerts users to potentially “harmful language” they’ve typed before hitting send, and the “Does This Bother You” feature, which detects potentially obscene messages being sent to users, automatically blurring out text so the recipient can’t see it without clicking on it. (Automatic blur is for text messages only; Tinder, like all Match-owned apps, doesn’t allow the exchange of private photos.)

But “harmful language” is a somewhat subjective concept. The applications are often particularly brutal for marginalized people.

Kobi Mickey, a 23-year-old Los Angeles singer-songwriter who is transgender and returned to Tinder in January, says she always has to defend her identity. “A lot of guys would say, ‘Hey, you’re so beautiful.’ But they would ask, Are you transient? Are you transient? It was very annoying. “It hasn’t happened much before,” she says. “Men are just giving me sexual interest or asking questions about me as if I’m not a real person. They distort everything else — my heart, my personality, my ambitions — and it makes me want to hold back and not approach dating.