
Pakistan blocks Tinder, Grindr and other apps - sbmthakur
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/02/pakistan-blocks-immoral-tinder-grinder-and-other-apps
======
nakodari
Pakistani here, I gave Tinder a try once and it was awful. The majority of
Pakistanis don't date the way Americans do due to the conservative values.
When we sign up for a dating app, what we're looking for is someone whom we
can connect with and marry soon - possibly within 6-12 months timeframe.
Tinder is optimized for American dating and is incompatible with our family
values. Therefore, when you signed up for Tinder in Pakistan, you saw that it
was a hookup app rather than an app that helps you find a lifelong partner.
Most Pakistanis who're serious about finding a partner use Muslim dating apps
like Muzmatch and Minder.

Edit: A lot of people have replied below that this does not justify banning
the app. I have simply shared my experience and also the experience of many
others in Pakistan. Tinder turned into an immoral app (borderline pornography
in many cases) and this being an Islamic Republic of Pakistan, it went against
the conservative values of the nation to hookup and thus it was banned by the
govt. The govt is the democratic representative of the people and does what
the majority of the nation expects them to do.

~~~
thiht
>The govt is the democratic representative of the people and does what the
majority of the nation expects them to do

A democracy must not be a tyranny of the majority. What if part of the
Pakistani population enjoy these apps? Why ban them if they don't harm
anybody?

~~~
throwaway0a5e
People think these apps are harming people by enabling behavior that harms
people.

It's the same line of reasoning that leads to prohibition on drugs, guns and
booze.

------
_trampeltier
Meanwhile in the western world banks decide about the content on pages like
Fetlife and about the color of dildos in webshops.

~~~
ravenstine
I wonder if the ability to send and receive money should be considered a right
as we become cashless.

~~~
gambiting
It is in some places already. In the UK for instance a bank _has to_ open a
basic checking account for you when asked, to avoid situations where people
without jobs or homeless cannot have a bank account(which is required for
nearly everything else). There can be many restrictions placed on such account
later on(no debit cards, no overdraft, no mobile banking etc), but it's
practically impossible for a bank to close a basic checking account for
someone.

~~~
_trampeltier
I think in the EU, one bank has let you to open a basic account and give you a
debit card. But as far I know, this is just for people, not companys. And in
they ask you for a fee to use the account and in theorie there is no upper
limit for the fee.

------
mellosouls
What is it about Tinder that brings on these flame-wars on HN?

It's almost like those who question Tinder's moral neutrality and innocence in
its impact on society have a point...

~~~
thefz
Talk about distros or the cool new tech, we can carry on a decent discussion.
Talk about sex life and everyone loses their mind.

~~~
stareatgoats
Sex, Russian trolls, Chinese nationalism, US foreign interventions and
Javascript in the browser. Plus a few other topics where everybody is an
expert, too.

------
thewatcher2
I'd support this action. Social media and dating apps are an experiment on the
population that they never consented to. We need a reserve of people who are
not as much impacted by it for further studies.

Until the day AR glasses come that can show you entire financial, sexual,
educational, criminal history etc of a person on the street, dating apps is
hurting the majority of the population.

So are the privacy laws that are going to stifle innovation, if people want
social media and hyper competitive dating, the free market would also allow
the right to violation of privacy by current standards which would allow for
AR glasses to show a person history before you even talk to them.

In the past people used to look at the family history or got introduced to
potential mates by trusted friends. Dating apps have none of that.

The market is neither free, nor fair.

A new generation of dating apps that monitor your entire life and do
background checks and publicize it to the world would change the playing field
immensely.

~~~
Mindwipe
> In the past people used to look at the family history or got introduced to
> potential mates by trusted friends.

Lol, no they didn't. They got drunk and hooked up at bars.

~~~
thewatcher2
Maybe your family did that, but people in my family don't. They preferred the
civilized way.

------
thefounder
Perhaps the pakistani people should be left to decide what's immoral and
what's not?

~~~
implements
Are Pakistani human rights different from the universal kind?

My viewpoint is that people should have freedom of religious conscience, and
with that a large degree of moral relativism with certain bounds.

Given that, is it appropriate that a country interferes with the expressed
sexuality of freely consenting adults? I don’t think so.

~~~
ooobit2
I think your opinion is irrelevant and based in ignorance of Islam and the
values that a predominately Islamic society holds for its citizens. These are
not _easy_ or often flippant decisions made and/or accepted by people. But
part of listening means accepting where you have a right to form opinions, to
have them heard, and to feel entitled to them being relevant. This is not
listening. This is you asserting a colonialist's supremacy on a culture that
does not agree with your ethic. This same line of thinking is what led to the
British invasions of Central Asia and Africa, that Indians were barbaric and
Brits would bring the education and civil discipline to their land and improve
their lives. Well, what good have yours and their Napoleon complexes left?

~~~
cpursley
> This is you asserting a colonialist's supremacy on a culture

Isn't this the history of Islam (colonization and expansion)? Were the people
in those places who got conquered not forced to comply with Islamic law?

I live in former Ottoman Empire territory where slave trade of women and young
boys was rampant until the Russian Empire put an end to it.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Me...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Meccan_merchant_and_his_Circassian_slave.jpg/1200px-
Meccan_merchant_and_his_Circassian_slave.jpg)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_slavery#Ottoman_slave_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_slavery#Ottoman_slave_trade)

------
bashwizard
Maybe it's time for the rest of the civilized world to block Pakistan.

~~~
aerodog
With your implying a country of 200 million people is "uncivilized" (hate
speech), perhaps it's more appropriate that HN blocks you?

~~~
garbagetime
Maybe the commenter edited his comment, but as it is now, it doesn't mention
or imply that Pakistan is uncivilized (which wouldn't be hate speech, anyway).

------
aerodog
People have a traditional way of building family. The American way, i.e. via
casual dating, often enhanced by apps, is experimental (barely a generation
in) and not looking good for society's long-term stability.

~~~
OneGuy123
This.

The saddest thing is that children are the main casualty in divorces.

Single-parent raised children are known to have more issues/anxiety/etc...
than children raised in a normal family.

~~~
morley
The divorce rate was going up long before online dating, and have actually
been going down since the onset of online dating. Though I'm skeptical they're
directly related.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/23/144-y...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/06/23/144-years-
of-marriage-and-divorce-in-the-united-states-in-one-chart/)

~~~
throwaway0a5e
> and have actually been going down since the onset of online dating.

I'm not blaming online dating (which I think is just a reflection of other
cultural changes) but it's kind of hard to get divorced if you're not married
and we know where marriage rates are going...

------
ArkVark
I'd welcome these applications being banned worldwide. Dating should be
brought back to the real world: through friends, communities, family
recommendations, and events.

The emphasis should be on finding a compatible mate, marriage, co-financing
and procreation. Dating apps encourage endless hookups and destabilisation -
this is their business model.

~~~
Erlich_Bachman
When your moral views are such that they require banning free apps (or free
speech etc) and enforcing your views on other people, that's stops being a
morality and starts being a tyranny.

~~~
knolax
So if I view murder as bad and I ban MRDR, a hot new SV startup that helps
murderers plan their murders, I'm a tyrant? The rest of the world isn't
obligated to import every social engineering system SV comes up with.

~~~
sbmthakur
Not sure how dating compares with murder. The former only happens when both
parties consent and usually doesn't involve harm.

~~~
knolax
It does harm to society. Just look at incels. That's a direct result of hookup
culture.

------
ponker
I don't know about "immoral", but based on my younger acquaintances'
experiences on Tinder, I believe that in the long-term it and its peer
services will be seen as equally destructive to Facebook -- what Facebook did
to interpersonal relationships/friendships Tinder will do to romantic/sexual
relationships.

I think that the world will basically have to have a reckoning with "freedom,"
i.e. that technology has created the ability to build digital technologies
that basically destroy the things we typically value. The companies in charge
are too hyperoptimized and the average human is too underoptimized for this to
be a fair fight... in the name of "engagement" Facebook can easily destroy the
basic subfloor of politics in a representative democracy, and Tinder can
destroy the basic subfloor of couplehood and family life.

~~~
rkachowski
Implicit here is the idea that couplehood and family life were more stable and
somehow more resistent to damage before technology came along and made it
easier for humans to interact.

An alternate theory is that Tinder actually reenforces the "basic subfloor of
couplehood and family life" by enabling and normalising ephemeral sexual and
romantic interaction, instead of requiring the individual to succumb to social
pressure and enter marriage for reasons other than personal. This would be
supported by the fact that divorce rates have been decreasing in the USA since
the 90s.[1]

I agree that more attention needs to be directed towards the ill effects that
technology can have on societal values, but the technology exposes and works
upon impulses already within us. The things we value are incredibly relative
and the ideas + images of friendship and family life we have now are
drastically different from even 40 years ago.

(that is to say, views are always changing and the idea that "this new thing
will destroy what we value" works in the exact same way that fm radio / home
taping / digital piracy killed the musician + music industry so many years ago
(i.e. it did not))

1\. [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/divorce-united-
states...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/divorce-united-states-
dropping-because-millennials/)

~~~
cageface
There's a lot of evidence that we are less satisfied with the choices we make
the more options we have. When you can compare your current partner to 1000
other options every day you're very likely to have some buyers remorse.

~~~
cgriswald
I certainly _can_ compare my partner to 1000 other options and I don’t need an
app to do so. The takeaway isn’t “options are bad while you are on the
market.” The take away is “Stop measuring your partner against others while
you’re not on the market.” And, of course, you don’t actually know those
others so you’re comparing your partner against some combination of others and
your own imagination. No partner can compare to your imagination. If you’re
doing this you might as well bail out of the relationship because you’re not
ready. No amount of banning apps is going to protect someone’s relationship
from themselves. A committed relationship takes... commitment; in both thought
and deed.

~~~
ponker
Sure, there are a lot of things that anyone _can_ do. The fact is that the
harder you make things, the fewer people will do them, the easier you make
things, the more people will do them. You can avoid processed junk food and
stay healthy but the availability of cheap junk food is what causes rampant
obesity and its societal costs.

