Goose promised friendship. Not sex. Not hooks. Just friends.
That pitch pulled Erick Hall in. The NY-based creator, boasting nearly a million followers, knows his work involves constant sexual availability. Goose marketed itself as the escape from that grind. He logged in. Chose photos. One had him pulling up a shirt, abs visible, jeans intact. Safe, right? Wrong. His account got flagged immediately. Inappropriate.
“Nudity… are not allowed,” the app told him.
It seems odd that a picture of abs violates a rule about commercial sexual services, but there it was. Hall felt rejected before he even started. He wanted gay friends, not a ban for showing a bit of skin.
The Algorithm Lie
Here is the messy part.
WIired dug up evidence in July that Goose co-founder David Aliagas may have paid for AI-generated Instagram accounts to fake user interest. It’s a classic growth hack. Make it look like the place to be.
So, does it work? People show up. But the vibe? Conflicting. Some see a haven for connection. Others see the same old hookup culture with a friendlier veneer.
Take Hunter Lawrence. An Austin hairstylist tired of transactional dating chats. He joined for the friendship angle. Within days? He got a text from a stranger: “Playing with my morning wood.” Lawrence laughed. Guys will be guys. Most chats stayed clean. He sees Goose as just another social layer, not a revolution. “No one’s reinventing the wheel.”
Who Gets In?
This is where the exclusivity bit turns ugly.
Goose is an invite-only club. Like Raya. But stricter on some fronts, looser on others. You send waves. You message. A map shows who is near. It looks like Sniffies met Instagram Stories. Disappearing messages. No screenshots allowed.
Critics ask: Why do you need screenshot protection and vanishing chat if this isn’t a sex app?
For Raffy Regulus, a nonbinary community health worker in the Bronx, the map was empty of people who looked like him. Black? Latinx? Nowhere. Mostly generic, cis white faces. Some looked AI-generated. “I’ve seen The Matrix,” he said. He deleted the app in a week.
He’s not alone. Prospective members claim photos with makeup got rejected. Bios cannot include pronouns. Yet femme profiles still pop up. The enforcement feels random. Or biased toward masculinity.
Goose co-founder Derek Chadwick denies this. Says the app ignores identity and gender expression. Claims it built without ethnicity filters. “Legacy platforms” have those issues, he argues, not Goose.
“We do not make decisions based on users’ identity, gender expression, or presentation.”
Data and Fakes
Privacy is another landmine.
One tech worker found his shirtless gym photos uploaded to a profile under a fake name—”Robert,” a 33-year attorney. The guy didn’t look like Robert. He looked like the user. The verification selfie process failed.
This raises questions. Why does a “safe” space fail at catching obvious catfishes? Worse, early terms of service let Goose keep rights to all user content. In perpetuity. To make “derivative works.” Essentially, the app owns your photos.
Backlash followed. By June 30, they updated the rules to limit scope. They still use the data for safety models, though. Always with a caveat.
Is It Worth It?
So why stick around?
For some, like Lawrence, the vanilla aspect wins. The dating world is noisy. Aggressive. Adverts for 24/7 sex. Goose offers a break from the debauchery.
“It’s pretty transparent about what it wants to do.”
Maybe that’s enough.
Erick Hall didn’t think so. He called the ban “for no good reason” and deleted the app. He just wanted a friend. Goose wanted compliance.
Which leaves a lingering question for those still scrolling the map? Are we building a community or just curating a safer room for the same old games?
