A new invite-only social app called Goose has launched pitching itself as an "anti-algorithm" alternative to swipe-heavy hookup platforms for gay men, promising friendship over transactional sex. Since its launch last month it has drawn a wave of curious sign-ups, but interviews with several users reveal a mixed picture: genuine excitement about a friendship-first pitch, alongside complaints about inconsistent content moderation, a catfish profile that slipped through verification, and a lack of racial diversity on the app's own map.
A Different Pitch From the Hookup Apps
Goose works much like Raya, an invite-only members' club. New users can join with an invite code or apply for access, and in at least one case an approval came through in under two hours. Yet look closely at the feature list and most of it will feel familiar. Users can send "waves" and up to seven direct messages a day. A live map shows where other members are located, in a manner reminiscent of Sniffies, and, echoing Facebook, users can "check in" to specific neighborhoods. Chats can be set to disappear, much like Snapchat, and profile photos flicker past on a timed loop in a style borrowed from Instagram Stories. There's also screenshot protection, similar to a rule on Raya that stops people from saving another user's pictures.
One Creator's Selfie Gets Flagged
Erick Hall is a New York City based OnlyFans creator with more than 800,000 followers on X. He says hooking up is part of his job, "all the time," which is exactly why Goose's pitch as something other than a hookup app caught his attention. When he signed up, he picked a handful of fully clothed selfies, including one in a black shirt, a baseball cap and blue jeans where he lifted his shirt to show his abs. His X bio describes him in explicit terms, but he didn't mention anywhere on his Goose profile that he works as an adult performer. Even so, when he logged back in to check on his application, he was told to upload new photos and review the platform's community guidelines. His account had been flagged as inappropriate. The message he received read: "Nudity, pornography, and sexually suggestive vulgar content are not allowed on Goose. Never engage in commercial transactions involving sexual activity or services."
The episode arrives months after reporting in July exposed what looked like a large network of AI-generated Instagram accounts that Goose cofounder David Aliagas appeared to have commissioned to funnel new users to the app. That marketing controversy raised a broader question that has followed Goose since: is the app actually building the kind of friendship-first community it advertises, or is the softer marketing simply a new coat of paint on an old hookup format?
Users Question the "Anti-Hookup" Design
Several members of the LGBTQIA+ community have pushed back on that framing online, pointing out that features like vanish mode and screenshot protection are typically associated with sending explicit photos rather than platonic chats. "Why do you need those two things if you are not sending a certain type of photo?" one user asked in a TikTok video. On X, another put it more bluntly: "So are we sucking dick on the Goose app or are we not???"
When Friendly Chats Turn Flirty Anyway
Hunter Lawrence, a 31-year-old hairstylist in Austin, Texas, had grown tired of the transactional churn on other dating apps and was drawn in by Goose's friendship-first framing. That didn't stop things from veering off script early on. He recalls asking one match a simple "How are you?" only to get back, "Being totally honest, playing with my morning wood." Retelling the exchange over the phone, Lawrence broke into laughter: "Guys will be gay guys." The conversation ended there, but Lawrence, who has used the app frequently since its launch last month, says most of his chats have stayed PG. He describes Goose as essentially angling to become an all-purpose social app for gay men rather than reinventing dating from scratch. "No one's reinventing the wheel here," he says.
Hall's experience left him far less charitable. After his account was flagged, he decided he was done with the app. "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 said.
Complaints Over Verification and Inclusivity
Hall isn't alone in raising concerns about inconsistent moderation. One prospective member says photos of himself wearing makeup were rejected during sign-up. The app appears geared toward a masculine-presenting user base and doesn't allow pronouns in bios, though femme-presenting accounts can still be found on the platform. Others point to a deeper issue: a lack of racial diversity. Raffy Regulus, a 35-year-old community health liaison in New York City who identifies as nonbinary, says the app's live map mislabeled his own neighborhood in the Bronx. When he widened the map's radius to 10 miles to try to find more queer men who looked like him, the results startled him. "It was hella scarce of Black and Latinx people anywhere in NYC, which is so odd to me," he said. "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 a week.
Goose cofounder Derek Chadwick says the company does not make decisions based on users' identity, gender expression or personal presentation, and denies ever having done so. Asked whether Goose has plans to improve the experience for members of color, Chadwick says the app was built without the kind of exclusionary mechanics, such as ethnicity filters, that he says have historically plagued older platforms. Goose has declined to disclose how many people have actually joined the app, though it says members have initiated more than 250,000 conversations since launch.
A Catfish Slips Through Verification
An X user posting as @whatsthattwunk, who asked that his real name not be published over professional concerns, discovered shirtless photos of himself, including one taken in a gym locker room in his underwear, had been uploaded to a Goose profile under the name "Robert," described as a 33-year-old attorney in Nashville. The 27-year-old tech worker, who lives in San Francisco, said an app that markets itself as invite-only or application-based ought to run something like facial recognition on uploaded photos. "However, they still passed a catfish profile," he said, adding that what irritated him most was that the impostor account made him look six years older than he actually is.
Goose requires members to take a selfie within the app to authenticate their profile, but its detection system doesn't catch every fake account. The incident left @whatsthattwunk wondering "if they truly care about verifying real users or just gathering biometric data for AI usage." Chadwick declined to detail exactly how Goose's verification system works, saying that doing so "materially helps bad actors research bypass techniques." He added that the moderation team is "aggressively managing" the creation of fake profiles.
Backlash Over the Fine Print on User Data
Goose has also faced criticism over how it handles the data and images members upload. Concerns about data mining began circulating widely online on June 27, after it emerged that Goose's original terms of service gave the company sweeping rights over user images, effectively letting it own, in perpetuity, any content uploaded or sent through the app and use it to "create derivative works of, adapt, reformat, translate, and otherwise exploit all or any portion of your Member Content." Following the backlash, Goose revised its terms of service on June 30 to, in the company's words, "explicitly limit its scope" over user rights. Even under the updated terms, however, Goose still uses member content to train its safety and anti-spam models and to develop its safety guidelines.
Still, Some See Promise in the Idea
Despite the string of controversies around its launch, Lawrence remains one of the app's more forgiving users, appreciating what he sees as its more low-key, sincere qualities. "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 said. "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."
