Panel: Who Owns Our Connection? Dating Apps & Intimacy

Panel - 18+ and older.

Dating apps and other online platforms promise connection but seem to profit from loneliness. Many collect very intimate data from HIV status and sexual preferences, to political alignment and precise location — and are quick to monetize them. Meanwhile, users are burning out from a cycle that involves ghosting, stalled conversations, and outright abuse. Who designs the architecture of how we find each other, and whose interests does it serve?

We're answering that question together with a clinical psychologist, the founders of two apps launching in Berlin, MeetMarket and Pulp, and an artist/documentarian on online dating and incels.

With

Naomi Darko - the founder and CEO of Pulp, the social platform for queer women and trans people, founded in 2026. She began her career in tech before moving into the dating space, where she advised dating app CEOs on strategy. Pulp grew out of her conviction that queer women, trans and non-binary people deserve more spaces of their own and better access to connection in all its forms. Through Pulp, she is building a place where that connection can happen spontaneously, in real life, on the community's own terms.

Gala Hernández López - artist, filmmaker and producer. Her films are born out of research processes and blend materialist critique, documentary elements and speculative fiction. They have been presented at Cannes, Berlinale, Rotterdam, IDFA, Cinéma du Réel, Berlinische Galerie, C/O Berlin, Jeu de Paume and the Palais de Tokyo. Her film “La Mécanique des fluides”, on the incel community and dating apps, won the César Award for Best Documentary Short Film in 2024.

Calum Bowden — MeetMarket
Chiara Riolfi