A new study from Cornell University found dating apps that let users filter potential matches by race promote discrimination.

Researchers combed through previous studies linking dating apps and racial biases. The authors agreed that although dating preferences are inherently personal, culture shapes how we interact with people from different backgrounds.

“Serendipity is lost when people are able to filter other people out,” Jevan Hutson, a Cornell researcher and co-author of the study, wrote in a press release. “Dating platforms have the opportunity to disrupt particular social structures, but you lose those benefits when you have design features that allow you to remove people who are different than you.”

Dating apps like The League, OkCupid, Jack’d and Coffee Meets Bagel allow users to state their racial preferences, which have ripple effects with how singles communicate with each other. The study found that black men and women are 10 times more likely to message white people than vice versa.

“It’s really an unprecedented time for dating and meeting online,” Hutson said. “More people are using these apps, and they’re critical infrastructures that don’t get a lot of attention when it comes to bias and discrimination. Our private lives have impacts on larger socioeconomic patterns that are systemic.”

Hutson pointed out that while matchmaking events and bars are not allowed to prevent entry based on race, apps are not subject to laws against discrimination.

“A random bar in North Dakota with 10 customers a day is subject to more civil rights directives than a platform that has 9 million people visiting every day,” Hutson said. “That’s an imbalance that doesn’t make sense.”

But some apps are trying to end “sexual racism” online. Gay dating app Grindr recently launched “Kindr,” an anti-discriminatory initiative that updates the community guidelines and bars users from writing racist bios. They also unveiled a video series featuring users who have faced online discrimination.

“If you don’t put ‘no Asians’ in your profile that doesn’t mean you have to [have sex with] Asians now, it just means I don’t have to see it,” comedian Joel Kim Booster says in one of the videos.