If Tinder wasn’t sleazy enough for you, apps have now begun embracing professional love. Yep. Prostitution. There’s now an app for that.
A Berlin-based company recently launched Peppr, a mobile app that mimics the dating website model concept to connect prostitutes with prospective clients. Peppr, which calls itself the “first mobile Web-app for booking erotic entertainment,” contains profiles of prostitutes that prospective customers can browse.
Pia Poppenreiter, one the app’s co-founders, got the idea for the service while walking through a red-light area in Berlin during winter.
“We’re trying to revolutionize the image of sex work in general … We’re trying to get it away from its shabby image.”
“I was walking down Oranienburger Strasse — I know it sounds cheesy, but it’s the truth — it was chilly and I saw the poor girls on the streets, and I thought, why isn’t there an app? It’s not efficient to wait outside,” she said during an interview with German newspaper The Local.
“We’re trying to revolutionize the image of sex work in general … We’re trying to get it away from its shabby image.”
Male and female prostitutes, or “Pepprs” as the service calls them, can upload their profiles onto the app for free. Clients, on the other hand, have to pay 5 or 10 euros to book through the service. For customers looking for something specific with their temporary mate, the app has adjustable filters, which allows users to peruse profiles according to body type or special services. Once a client decides on his desired companion, he can get in touch and make a date.
To make sure that people aren’t being forced into selling their services, the company behind the app conducts interviews to detect abuse, even though they admit that cannot guarantee that everyone is signing on willingly. Peppr has a tie-up with escort agencies and speaks with prostitutes by phone before uploading their profiles.
“We have a short conversation to get the feeling that this is voluntary and they are independent sex workers … We try to ask them — you kind of find out in a conversation whether they’re doing it on a voluntary basis — we ask them what they did before, whether they’ve always worked voluntarily and so on,” Poppenreiter said.
Peppr, which launched on April 1, exists because Germany legalized prostitution in 2002. The country’s prostitution industry is said to generate 16 billion euros per year.
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