“We will not be silent, and we will not be inactive,” the company said in a post on social media Monday. “We will continue to fight racism on Grindr, both through dialogue with our community and a zero-tolerance policy for racism and hate speech on our platform. As part of this commitment, and based on your feedback, we have decided to remove the ethnicity filter from our next release.”

The ethnicity filter has long been a controversial option. In the app it is possible to filter profiles by, for example, height, age, sexual interests and thus ethnicity. Critics say the latter would support racism on the app. It also refers to other expressions such as “no blacks, no Asians” in the short texts that users write on their profile.

Numerous American cities have been in turmoil for a week, after an African American man was brutally held to the ground by a white police officer, resulting in his death.

Since the death of George Floyd and subsequent protests, Grindr has decided to make a donation to two human rights organizations working for the position of African American citizens within society.

The company also planned to organize a special Pride initiative, #PridePreserves, but the app makers have now cancelled those plans. “How can we launch a month of celebration when so many of us are hurting?’’ the company writes on Instagram. ‘’How can we celebrate Pride without acknowledging that we wouldn’t even HAVE a Pride month if it weren’t for the brave black, brown, trans, and queer folks whose uprising against the police at Stonewall gave birth to the modern LGBTQ+ rights movement?’’