Sorry, married creeps, the jig is up.
The dating app Hinge will now display users' relationship status if they are married, engaged, or in a relationship on Facebook. People with no Facebook relationship status or who are listed as "single" will not be affected by the change.
According to a post on its blog, a total of 3.6% of Hinge users are either married, engaged, or in a relationship on Facebook.
A spokesperson for Hinge told BuzzFeed News, "The move is in response to learning that 1.6% of our users are married or engaged [an additional 2% are in a relationship], and wanting to ensure we maintain a trustworthy environment for those who do want to meet someone more seriously. Hinge is currently for finding relationships, and we want to keep it that way."
The app isn't kicking married people off, just making their Facebook status clear to potential suitors. There's good reason for that. There are plenty of reasons someone's Facebook profile might say they're married or in a relationship but they're looking to date. Some people are in open relationships or marriages and are transparent about their status. Or someone could be in the process of getting a divorce, but it hasn't been finalized (or they just haven't broken it to their whole social circle yet). There are married people who just like lurking for fun and never try to make matches.
And, of course, there are people in relationships who are using the app for cheating and may be deceptive in their profiles about their status. For single people who are only looking for other single people, finding out that your match is actually married has been a longtime nuisance of online dating. This measure will likely be very welcome for the majority of users who are singles looking for other singles.
There's one last group that might be seriously affected: people who joke-married their bestie back in high school and never got around to changing it. Hinge told BuzzFeed News, "We hope that by announcing this early people who are in fake relationships on Facebook (with their best friends, etc.) will update their profiles to reflect their accurate relationship status."