Sign up for smart news, insights, and analysis on the biggest financial stories of the day.
Now where will Putin upload his shirtless pics?
Match Group, the conglomerate behind big-name dating apps like Tinder and Hinge, says it’s pulling its services out of Russia by June 30th, citing human rights as its reason for leaving. It didn’t explain precisely what or whose human rights were violated to prompt this decision a full 15 months after the invasion of Ukraine. But at least it was polite in declining its Russian date.
The Russians Love Their Dating Apps Too
Most Western companies left Russia, or at least publicly began the process of leaving, shortly after the invasion began in February 2022. Match Group’s services lingered, however, and were even deployed by some Ukrainians as a counter weapon to the Kremlin’s propaganda. Ukrainians would set their location to Russia as a way to circumvent the online Iron Curtain and talk directly to Russian singles about the realities of the war.
But now Match says it’s leaving, and it clearly didn’t want to make its tardy departure too conspicuous. The announcement that it would withdraw its services from Russia is tucked away on the 37th page of the company’s annual impact report, published Monday:
- In a 33-word paragraph stating its decision, Match says it is “committed to protecting human rights.” Russia is mentioned nowhere else in the report, a Match Group declined to comment further when contacted by The Daily Upside.
- Friends Fiduciary, a shareholder in Match Group which describes itself as investing in “Quaker values”, hinted in a statement to Reuters that the timing has something to do with President Putin’s indictment by the International Criminal Court in March for the alleged illegal deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.
Optics, Kinda: “It’s not a good look for a trusted brand to be continuing operations in a nation where the head of state has been indicted by the International Criminal Court,” Friends Fiduciary’s executive director Jeff Perkins told Reuters. It wasn’t a great look to begin with, but ok.