On a cold July morning in Canberra, a man rode his motorbike to meet a person he'd be chatting to on the hookup app Grindr only to find four men who then allegedly assaulted him.
Jeremy Oliver, Victoria police's LGBTQ+ portfolio manager, tells Guardian Australia that some anti-LGBTQ+ influencers are promoting methods of attacks or recordings that people do of attacking queer people.
We have seen that rise in anti-LGBTIQ+ community sentiment over the last couple of years, so I believe it's emerged from that, but also because there's these influencers that are promoting these attacks and methods online globally as well.
It's all connected through social media and apps, he says. Victoria police, noticing incidents arising across the state as well as the rest of the country, alerted other agencies at a bimonthly meeting of police agencies across Australia and New Zealand.
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