Tinder is trying a new trick: admitting it created some problems and then offering high-tech bandages. The app has launched a suite of features meant to push things away from swipe sport and toward low-pressure, social connections. The rollout includes a feature called Double Date that lets two friends pair up their profiles to swipe together. It sounds like party planning. It also sounds familiar to people who were previously punished for the same behavior.

The Double Date déjà vu

Lauren Grauer, a New York talent marketer, says she once built a paired profile with a friend and was banned for account sharing. When Tinder began advertising Double Date, she posted about it and said she felt wronged all over again. She does not want to return to the app. Tinder’s public rules do prohibit account sharing, which is why her earlier profile was flagged.

New leadership, new message

Spencer Rascoff, Tinder’s new chief executive, has repositioned the app away from pure swipe counts and toward helping people make real connections. At a media event in Los Angeles he said, in effect, that matches are not the point and that people want more meaningful contact. That framing is central to the rebrand.

A quick history lesson

The dating app revolution was not born with Tinder, but Tinder made swiping mainstream. Grindr arrived in 2009 focusing on local gay dating, and Tinder launched in 2012 and changed user expectations. By 2016 Tinder reportedly had about 50 million users and roughly a quarter of the U.S. market. Over time the app’s ecosystem became game-like, with many users swiping without real intent. Industry coverage even labeled the moment a cultural turning point.

Usage and revenue have shown stress. In the final quarter of 2025 Tinder’s paying subscriber count fell by 8 percent to 8.8 million.

What Tinder is building now

Tinder’s refresh bundles a redesigned profile plus a number of new features aimed at making matches feel less transactional. Highlights include:

  • Double Date: pair your profile with a friend to swipe together.
  • Astrology mode: match people based on zodiac compatibility.
  • Chemistry: an AI tool that analyzes a user’s camera roll to infer interests and personality traits. The company says it does not store the analyzed photo data.

Under the hood, Tinder says it has rebuilt its algorithm and that artificial intelligence now writes a large share of the app’s new code. The company has also made organizational shifts, including a workforce reduction earlier in 2025.

Safety, AI, and the uncomfortable parts

Tinder is investing in trust and safety, including a large budget increase and making its face verification process mandatory worldwide. The company says fake accounts are the biggest moderation problem and account for most of the content moderation workload.

On the moderation side, Tinder is expanding AI features designed to reduce abusive exchanges. Tools like an upgraded Are You Sure? will warn users before they send potentially harmful messages, and a Does This Bother You feature will auto-blur profanity so recipients must opt in to view it. The firm says its large language models are being trained to detect nuance and intent, and to recognize patterns tied to harassment, threats, coercive behavior, and other abusive language.

Those safeguards are not a cure-all. The definition of harmful language can be subjective, and marginalized users still report routine mistreatment. Kobe Mehki, a trans singer-songwriter in Los Angeles, says her experience on the app has included repeated questions about her gender and persistent sexualization that erased other parts of her identity. That kind of behavior discourages people from dating at all.

Who Tinder says it is trying to help

Company executives say many of the new product choices are aimed at women and Gen Z users. That strategy follows data showing a strong male skew in Tinder’s user base. The company also points to changing user behavior: a 2025 singles study found more than a quarter of U.S. singles have used AI to help write profiles or messages.

Is it enough?

There is skepticism. Some users describe Tinder as a place people visit out of habit or for casual hookups rather than to build relationships. Bobby Fitzgerald, who left the app in 2018 because the experience felt repetitive and staged, logged back in briefly in early 2026 and decided to step away again and meet people offline instead.

Tinder’s approach is a mix of product experimentation and major investment in safety. The company hopes that AI, better verification, and social features will rebuild trust and bring people back. Whether those changes repair broader shifts in dating culture is an open question. For now, Tinder is trying to be both less swipe-focused and more socially driven, while the rest of us decide if we want to return to the app or keep meeting people where we always have.