Hook-up app users show less face pics in homophobic countries
Gay hook-up app Scruff has conducted a global survey, in an attempt to discover in which countries users feel comfortable showing their faces.
In the most recent ‘Scrufftisitc’ survey, the popular online app examined how the percentage of profiles with face pictures varied among countries worldwide.
Scruff said they hoped to show how an user’s decision to show his face in a profile photo is effected by “cultural, local, personal, and legal factors.”
They said they wanted to see “whether there was a negative correlation between the criminalization of same-sex acts (or LGBT activism) and the prevalence of face pics in a given country.”
The country with the lowest prevalence of face pictures featured was South Sudan, where only 8.3% of profiles included a member’s face.
South Sudan – which became the world’s newest country when it declared independence in 2011 – criminalises same-sex sexual activity, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.
Other countries in featured in the bottom five of the list included Mali, which had the “highest rate of non-acceptance in the 45 countries surveyed”, as well as Mauritania, Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia, where same-sex sexual activity is either highly criminalised or illegal.
At the other end of the survey, Norway came out on top of the list, with 56.1% of profiles including a picture of the user’s face, with Iceland, Belgium, Netherlands and Denmark also featuring in the top 5. The UK came in at number 11, with 49% of users opting to include a picture of their face as part of their online profile.
Scruff also conducted an earlier survey to see examining how the percentage of profiles with face pictures varied among U.S. states and cities.
