From the other side of the military checkpoints and towering slabs of concrete that separate Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, a stranger greeted me through cyberspace. I opened Tinder and examined his profile. The photos were fairly typical: a tall man with long black curls and an earring laughing on the beach, posing in the gym, wearing a suit and button up.
My attention moved to the bio section underneath his profile. I thought, pulling up Google Maps to confirm what I already knew.
This was the first stroke of luck for my relationship with Samir. This is swiping right from within the complex geopolitical reality of Israel and Palestine. But this is not really how I see our story. After all, if I were an Israeli citizen, like nearly everyone I was with at the time, Samir and I would likely never have been able to meet face to face. Though Tinder operates as if the nature of its technical apparatus allows it to transcend borders altogether, the truth is that, by default, the app reflects, and at times even reinforces, a bleak, segregated reality.
When I arrived on campus, I was struck by a sense of borderlessnessโa kind of transnationalism that defined both the form and content of our work. In a single day I might meet virtually with a coworker in Switzerland, work on a project with designers or engineers from India, Germany, Hong Kong, and Norway, and conduct interviews with users in Romania and Milwaukee.
In that same spirit, my team treated our productโone that allows advertisers around the world to access an international clienteleโas culturally agnostic, relevant as much to users locally as to those on the other side of the world. Andy Andersen, who works on international growth at Tinder and is the founder AppLocalization.
