Derek Chadwick, the cofounder of the new gay dating app Goose, has suddenly quit the company after the platform was exposed for tricking men into signing up using fake, AI generated influencers, the magazine Out reports.
Chadwick, who is also a model and influencer with millions of followers, made the cryptic announcement on Tuesday in an Instagram post.
“Some personal news. As of last week, I’ve stepped away from Goose,” Chadwick wrote. “This was not a decision I made lightly. Building something for our community has been one of the most meaningful things I’ve gotten to do, and I’m proud to have helped push that forward.”
Chadwick addressed the reasons behind his departure in vague terms, although if we’re reading between lines, it seems like he’s trying to exonerate himself of being involved in any wrongdoing.
“Where I landed is that my vision for where this should go and the direction the company is going aren’t the same thing anymore,” he wrote. “When my name and my face are on something, I want to be able to stand behind all of it, fully. As that stopped being true, staying didn’t feel right.”
Goose markets itself as an alternative to Grindr, the dominant gay dating app. Whereas Grindr tends to focus on hookups, Goose promises to be the place where you could find meaningful relationships and, hell, true love. Its intimate social media marketing, along with the fact that its founder is himself a popular influencer, helped it surge towards the top of the App Store.
But a lot of the word-of-mouth hype appears to be built on a lie. Last month, Wired published an investigation that found that the app was using fake accounts on Instagram to bewitch unsuspecting men into signing up for the platform. These accounts had suspiciously high following-to-follower ratios and featured profile pictures that were clearly AI-generated, the magazine found.
The accounts went to alarming lengths to convince men to join Goose. Some would reach out to men in their DMs and add them to their Close Friend Stories, where an AI deepfake of an attractive man would try to woo followers into thinking they were becoming part of an exclusive club by joining Goose.
The app acknowledged Chadwick’s departure in a statement to Out, but didn’t provided any additional context.
“As Goose enters its next phase of growth, Derek Chadwick stepped away from his role as Co-Founder,” the company stated. “We are grateful for Derek’s leadership and vision that he has brought to the company and the foundation he has helped build.”
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