A billboard campaign by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) in Los Angeles has raised a few eyebrows and the ire of the dating app, Tinder, prompting the latter to demand the billboards be taken down.

Two weeks ago, the AHF commenced a billboard campaign designed to bring attention to the growing sexually transmitted infection (STI) situation in the city that features silhouettes emblazoned with the words–Tinder, Chlamydia, Grindr, Gonorrhea.

Image/AHF
Image/AHF

The STD-fighting organization says the mobile dating apps are a big contributor to increases in STI, citing reports (one from the Rhode Island Department of Health).

“Mobile dating apps are rapidly altering the sexual landscape by making casual sex as easily available as ordering a pizza,” said Whitney Engeran-Cordova, Senior Director, Public Health Division for AHF.

“In many ways, location-based mobile dating apps are becoming a digital bathhouse for millennials wherein the next sexual encounter can literally just be a few feet away—as well as the next STD. While these sexual encounters are often intentionally brief or even anonymous, sexually transmitted diseases can have lasting effects on an individual’s personal health and can certainly create epidemics in communities at large. We want to remind sexually active adults—especially young people—how easy it can be to contract an STD and the importance of undergoing regular screenings to protect their sexual health.”

Tinder has responded saying the link between the apps and STIs are unsubstantiated. “These unprovoked and wholly unsubstantiated accusations are made to irreparably damage Tinder’s reputation in an attempt to encourage others to take an HIV test by your organization,” Tinder attorney Jonathan Reichman said in a letter to the foundation.

AHF said they will not take down the billboard.

Robert Herriman is a microbiologist and the Editor-in-Chief of Outbreak News Today and the Executive Editor of The Global Dispatch

Follow @bactiman63

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