Hornet:    For a couple of years, I've had a problem with intrusive ads on Hornet.    The type of advert that pops up and will run for 1~2 minutes or even indefinitely, sometimes with no obvious way to shut it down.   Some have an X in the corner to shut the ad, but this is far from common.

A few years back, this had similar market share to Grindr, but where I am in the UK, there are just 2 other people within a 10km radius at present.     There are 87 people within a 10km radius in Grindr and the true number on Grindr will be higher, as I use their excellent block feature as a filter.

I'm not surprised that Hornet have lost customers in the UK as a result of the advertising, although I'm more surprised that it remains popular in Thailand.

I did try contacting Hornet customer support.    They didn't fix the problem, but did give me a week of their paid service.  

That did get rid of the adverts, but when there are no customers where I live, what's the point in subscribing ?      I'd consider it in Thailand, but there are a few other minor problems with Hornet, which it doesn't fix.

Running Hornet in a browser does avoid the problem.

 

Grindr:    This has been fine until a couple of months ago, when it started having exactly the same problem as Hornet.     Adverts that just run and run.   In some cases, I can get rid of the ad by allowing it to open the Play store, then it will let me return to Grindr.

I've contacted Grindr customer support, but hold out very little hope of a resolution.    From previous contact with them, I know even their senior management are full of excuses.

 

I must have about 30 other apps on my phone that run ads, mostly non-dating apps of course.     Out of those, the only 2 apps running intrusive ads are Hornet and Grindr, so clearly having this problem is optional. 

My phone runs Android 10 and the latest version of the apps.

I have a much older Android tablet, that's almost due for replacement and that seems better.

 

Does anyone else use these apps and have the same problem ?

If commenting, please confirm which operating system you have.

 

Of course, I don't expect people to write apps and run them with no revenue stream.    I just expect the advertising to be proportional to the content and don't see the point in adverts that are so painful that I will blacklist whatever they are advertising.

 

 

And Blued is as bad... If not worse👎

7 hours ago, Lotusleaf said:

And Blued is as bad... If not worse👎

Whilst I might browse Blued occasionally, I only really use it when visiting a region where it's so popular I have to use it.      Such as Yangon.

In an ideal world, all the users would swiftly migrate to apps that keep advertising at reasonable levels, such as Romeo.

On 4/2/2022 at 6:50 AM, Lotusleaf said:

And Blued is as bad... If not worse👎

I would say it's probably the worst.