When Aaron* logged onto the kinky, non-monogamy-focused dating app Feeld on Thursday to finalize his plans with an opponent, the interface wouldn’t load. As a middle-aged man in an ethically non-monogamous relationship, Aaron finds the field to be a great way to meet like-minded people in his area. And that’s exactly what he wanted to do last Friday. Someone he had a connection with was in town for just one night, so he wanted to take advantage of it.
He tried logging back in and changing his Wi-Fi connection, but nothing seemed to have any effect. Confused, he took to Hex, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to see if there was any explanation.
That’s when he saw Field’s post informing him that the app was down and would be down the next day. Aaron’s heart sank. The person I was talking to was scheduled to leave the next day and the only communication was through the app.
Aaron is one of many frustrated users whose weekend plans were thrown off by the unexpected and unusually long and controversial Feel update that went into effect on Friday. Many of them complained to X, but their grievances grew more and more thirsty, depressed, and hopeless as the days passed.
“We need statistics on how many pregnancies don’t occur because of one day of field downtime,” one person wrote. “You guys ruined the threesome for me. I’m still waiting for her to log back in and notice the app is working again 😒,” another user wrote. Other “disgusted” users blamed the loss of opportunities to meet people, and many threatened to cancel their memberships altogether.
Thomas, a bisexual man from Kansas, has been in the field for a little over two years. He pays for his Majestic membership of $24.99 per month. This provides the user with bonus features such as unlimited likes, the ability to see who has liked his profile, and privacy features that allow him to hide from his Facebook friends, but he does not want to be in contact with anyone. We are not competing. Anyone for a while. That was until last week, when I finally matched with someone I liked. He was ready to move the conversation outside of the app, but then the app crashed, something users often do given the platform’s notorious interface and functionality. Normally he wouldn’t have been surprised, except that he just paid an arm and a leg for his membership.
Other users expressed dissatisfaction with the payment aspect. “This is a business transaction. If you don’t get what you paid for, you should either get your money back or extend your membership,” said Michael, a 40-year-old Feel user from New York. Another user put it more succinctly: “To you scammers who didn’t pay for this garbage, give me your money back.” (He emailed that he was working on a compensation plan in real time.)
Katherine, a Nassau County resident in her 40s, is also a paying user and has been for the past two years. But while she had five dates planned for her over the weekend, which resulted in the cancellation of those dates, she’s more upset about another feature in the update. Currently, the app displays the name of the actual town or borough where users live, which she believes is a major privacy concern.
“This means that if I want to check my app from my bedroom at night, it basically reveals the name of my small town,” she wrote in an email to Slate. “There are only a few thousand people living there, and from a privacy perspective, this is very different from revealing the entire district name.” As a result, Katherine quit the app altogether. Ta.
Others have similar privacy concerns. One user, who wished to remain anonymous, also highlighted concerns about the safety of location sharing and said he had turned off the app’s Discover feature, an action that removes a user from a pool of profiles in a specific location so they can be viewed. He criticized the CEO’s proposal to simply do so. Applies to existing connections only.
“Is that really your solution? If you don’t feel comfortable with us recording your personal information, just don’t use the app? Change this felt! This is wrong,” they said. is writing. “All the other bugs can be addressed, but this is not a bug. This is a serious safety issue for women and the LGBTQ+ community, and I won’t pay for this app unless this changes.” I never use it.”
(When asked about bugs and privacy issues with the new location settings, Feeld directed me to the following site: Official statement regarding X, they say they have turned off the location feature completely while they consider how to implement it securely. )
Many Feeld users I’ve talked to are frustrated with the app, but feel stuck because of the app’s unique position in the dating scene. Billed as a “dating app for open-minded individuals,” the app supports ethical non-monogamy, polyamory, kinky, casual sex, and other less traditional sexual preferences and relationships. tends to cater to people who are interested in their tastes. And while it’s not a queer-specific app, it does provide a safe and often fruitful place to connect for people of a more diverse range of gender expressions and sexual orientations.
“We have no other choice,” Thomas said. “Whether people are dating for kinky or queer inclusivity, that’s outside the realm of Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble, but no other app has attempted this first.”
And in the age of instant gratification, we can become a little… spoiled. “Even if it takes her more than a second for a website to load, she’s like, ‘Oh my god, what’s going on?'” she said. Eloise is a new Feeld user whose plans were affected by an outage. For her, the update rollout is terrible by her 2023 standards, but it’s not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. She said: “It feels like an eternity even though it really isn’t that long.”
While the app is now back online to some extent (though many users are still facing issues), Feeld is well aware of the inconvenience and some issues with the update. After seeing my call for articles, the app’s PR team contacted me and emphasized that they were working hard to figure out all the issues. Unfortunately, it was too late for Aaron’s weekend plans.
“We’re both people who do our due diligence properly and are very careful about who we meet online and how we communicate with someone in terms of privacy,” he said. talked about people. “We decided to keep it on the app until a certain point.” And by the time the app was backed up and usable to some extent, she was hundreds of miles away. Away.
* All names have been changed to protect identities.