Gay Men Flocked to Goose for Friendship. Some Still Feel Excluded | WIRED

Overview

Gay Men Flocked to Goose for Friendship. Some Still Feel Excluded

When Erick Hall heard that Goose, a new “anti-algorithm” dating app, was less focused on hookups, he was drawn to its mission.

Details

The New York City–based Only Fans creator, who has over 800,000 followers on X, explains he has to hook up “all the time” for work. Because Goose was marketing itself as an alternative to that, he was curious what it had to offer.

During the sign-up process he chose a few selfies where he was fully clothed; in one, wearing a black shirt, a baseball cap, and blue jeans, he pulled his shirt upward showing off his abs. While his X bio says “I Have a 9 Inch Dick and a Bubble Butt,” he didn’t mention anything about being an adult performer on his Goose page. But when he logged back in to see if he’d been approved he was greeted with a message instructing him to upload new photos and check out the community guidelines. His account had been flagged as inappropriate.

“Nudity, pornography, and sexually suggestive vulgar content are not allowed on Goose. Never engage in commercial transactions involving sexual activity or services,” the message read.

In July, WIRED exposed a large-scale network of what appeared to be AI Instagram accounts that Goose cofounder David Aliagas seemingly commissioned to attract new users to the platform. But beyond the veil of shady marketing, questions lingered: Are people actually flocking to Goose, and how is its more friendship-oriented marketing spin playing out?

The users WIRED spoke to describe the platform as seemingly focused on establishing genuine relationships outside of sex while still making it easy to have casual sex. But they also say the app suffers from flawed moderation and doesn’t always feel welcoming to people of color.

As with Raya, Goose operates as a kind of invite-only members club. Users can access the app with an invite code or apply to join. (My approval took less than two hours.) Nearly all of Goose’s features are available on other platforms. Users can send waves and up to seven direct messages per day. Its live map, which tells you where other users are located, is reminiscent of Sniffies and, similar to Facebook, it lets users “check in” to different neighborhoods. Disappearing chats echo Snapchat. User profiles, where photos flicker by on a timed loop, function like Instagram Stories. There’s also screenshot protection, akin to Raya’s rule that prevents people from saving your pictures.

As some people in the LGBTQIA+ community have pointed out online, many of these features appear to be hookup-oriented. “Why do you need those two things if you are not sending a certain type of photo?” one user asked on Tik Tok about vanish mode and screenshot protection. Added another on X: “So are we sucking dick on the Goose app or are we not???”

Hunter Lawrence, who was exhausted from the churn of transactional interactions on other dating apps, was also wooed by Goose’s focus on friendship over hookups. But not long after he joined, things got a little X-rated. He says he asked one guy, “‘How are you?’ And he was like, ‘Being totally honest, playing with my morning wood,’” Lawrence says, breaking into laughter over the phone. “Guys will be gay guys.” The chat ended after that exchange, but the 31-year-old Austin, Texas, hairstylist, who has been a frequent user since Goose launched last month, says most of his conversations have remained PG.

Lawrence sees Goose as angling to be an all-use social media app. “No one’s reinventing the wheel here,” he says.

Hall, meanwhile, says he gave up on Goose after his submission was flagged. “Honestly, I was excited about an app to make gay friends but disappointed I got banned for no good reason. I’m deleting it,” he tells WIRED via direct message.

He’s not the only one who has complained about Goose having an inconsistent verification process or inclusivity issues. One prospective member alleges photos in which he wore makeup were rejected; the app appears to be geared toward masc men and doesn’t allow pronouns in bios, but I encountered several femme accounts. Others, like Raffy Regulus, a 35-year-old community health liaison in New York City who identifies as nonbinary, complain about a lack of racial diversity, particularly where he lives in the Bronx.

When he filtered the map, which he says wrongly labeled his neighborhood, to a 10-mile radius in an attempt to locate more queer men who looked like him, “It was hella scarce of Black and Latinx people anywhere in NYC, which is so odd to me,” he tells WIRED. “I mostly encountered cis white men that looked either generic or AI generated—probably both. I’ve seen The Matrix.” He deleted the app after one week.

Goose cofounder Derek Chadwick tells WIRED the company does not make decisions based on users’ identity, gender expression, or personal presentation, and denies ever doing so. Asked if the app has plans to improve the experience for POC members, Chadwick says it was built without exclusionary mechanics they say have historically plagued legacy platforms, such as ethnicity filters.

It’s unclear how many users have actually joined Goose; the app declined to share numbers but said that members have initiated over 250,000 conversations since launch.

X user @whatsthattwunk, who asked that WIRED not publish his name due to professional concerns, found out that shirtless photos of him, including one snapshot he’d taken in a gym locker room in his underwear, had been uploaded to a Goose profile under the name “Robert,” a 33-year-old attorney in Nashville.

“For something that advertises as invite-only or [where] people need to apply to get accepted, I would think they would do like facial recognition on photo uploads. However, they still passed a catfish profile,” says the 27-year-old tech worker in San Francisco, who was most upset by the imposter thinking he looked 33.

Goose members are required to take a selfie within the app to authenticate their profiles, but the detection system doesn’t always catch fake profiles. @whatsthattwunk says the incident made him wonder “if they truly care about verifying real users or just gathering biometric data for AI usage.” Chadwick declined to confirm the verification system Goose uses because “doing so materially helps bad actors research bypass techniques.” He says the moderation team is “aggressively managing” the creation of fake profiles.

Despite the controversy that has surrounded the app’s launch, Lawrence appreciates the more vanilla aspects of Goose.

“When it comes to the dating space in the gay world, everyone wants to make a problem or pick it apart, when I think it’s pretty transparent about what it is and what it wants to do,” he says. “It’s a nice departure from the real debauchery of what we’re so used to being advertised to, which is just sex 24/7. To have one place that is just for something a bit more genuine is nice.”

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Key Takeaways

Gay Men Flocked to Goose for Friendship
When Erick Hall heard that Goose, a new “anti-algorithm” dating app, was less focused on hookups, he was drawn to its mission
The New York City–based Only Fans creator, who has over 800,000 followers on X, explains he has to hook up “all the time” for work
During the sign-up process he chose a few selfies where he was fully clothed; in one, wearing a black shirt, a baseball cap, and blue jeans, he pulled his shirt upward showing off his abs
“Nudity, pornography, and sexually suggestive vulgar content are not allowed on Goose