Dating online while poly

More and more dating apps are opening up their settings to cater more to polyamorous people, but they’re still in the early stages. Enter #open, an app developed by Amanda Wilson and David Epstein to be a sex positive and polyamory positive platform for people to connect on.

Amanda and David wanted to prioritize communication on #open, so they designed their app to focus heavily on negotiation, consent, and boundaries. Users sign a code of conduct to ensure that they understand that consent and inclusion are important and need to be respected.

Data privacy

Additionally, one of the biggest concerns while creating #open was the idea of data privacy. Most other dating apps trade data with third parties or use third-party authentication, or something of the sort. It was important to Amanda and David that all of the data for #open was secure, so they made sure their privacy policy covered all bases.

“People want to be themselves. We just really wanted to build a platform that was for the users and always had their privacy and their security in mind from the very beginning.”

Amanda

#open’s biggest challenge

The biggest challenge when creating #open and continually developing and updating it is funding. Attracting investment is difficult for dating apps, especially when choosing not to share any data. Amanda and David have self-funded #open, and if they could advertise on Facebook or other large platforms, it would help with revenue. Reddit, and by turn, Facebook, denied their application by the logic that #open was placed in the category of mail order brides and that community sentiment was that content like that is unwanted. Being sex positive and relationship positive in a world where corporations are moralizing is difficult, and hypocritical in Facebook’s case, since millions of their users practice consensual non-monogamy.

To combat the hypocrisy, Amanda and David have started a petition to call Facebook out on their censorship. It can be viewed and signed on their website, www.hashtagopen.com, along with more information about #open and its creation.

Listen to the full episode to learn about Amanda and David’s full experience creating their app!