Update: The Daily Beast took down its article on Thursday night, issuing an apology to its readers. "We were wrong. We’re sorry," an editor's note read. "And we apologize to the athletes who may have been inadvertently compromised by our story." My original story on the Daily Beast's article follows below.

The Daily Beast has a bizarre story in which reporter Nico Hines got a few dates on Grindr while stationed in Rio de Janeiro to cover the Summer Olympics. On its face, the story may seem like yet another fluffy piece about sex in the Olympic village, and not much else. But it did do one potentially awful thing: It may have outed multiple gay athletes, including one from "a notoriously homophobic country," potentially putting people in real danger.

The first big problem is the story offers zero value to readers. Seriously. These are the actual takeaways:

Humans like sex. Humans use dating apps to find sex. Olympians are humans, so by the transitive property, they like sex and dating apps.

That’s it. (The story also manages to make gay Olympian sex sound boring, which is noteworthy, but kind of beside the point.)

What the story does beyond that, as Attitude magazine pointed out, is potentially out some athletes. By offering hints at athletes’ heights, weights, other physical features, and placement in their respective competitions, it gives just enough information to put together who some of them are — and, as Attitude points out, it looks like at least one was indeed closeted.

This is, quite frankly, dangerous. Many people use dating apps explicitly to hook up without having to reveal their names or faces in the public — something, say, a gay club or bar would expose.

That a straight Daily Beast writer directly violated this basic expectation of anonymity puts these athletes at risk. This may be unimaginable to those who don’t know what homosexuality around the world looks like. But remember, some of these athletes are from countries where homosexuality is still very socially stigmatized, illegal, or even punished by death. If any of these people are exposed, it could ruin their careers or even put them in prison or worse.

Other readers pointed out that the story seemed to shame gay sex, since all the anecdotes focused on the gay dating app Grindr. Hines even wrote, "No prizes for guessing that Grindr proved more of an instant hookup success than Bumble or Tinder" — suggesting that gay men are automatically more promiscuous.

The Daily Beast acknowledged these concerns in a follow-up note, writing:

There was some concern that the original version of this story might out gay male athletes, even by implication, or compromise their safety. This was never our reporter’s intention, of course. No names were ever used and some of the profiles described were of straight women. But there was a concern that even mentioning the home nation of some gay athletes could compromise their safety. As a result, we have removed all descriptions of the men and women’s profiles that we previously described.

Okay, but the internet never forgets. That information is now out there, and some of the most homophobic parts of the world have had no qualms in the past with outing people based on even the slightest bits of information.

It’s particularly worrying because the story seems to provide no journalistic purpose whatsoever. The editor’s note states, "The concept for the piece was to see how dating and hook-up apps were being used in Rio by athletes." But people know how these apps are used. That some world-class athletes use them too is not a groundbreaking revelation.

Instead, the story possibly outed some athletes, and could be interpreted as shaming gay sex. And it remains online even after people raised concerns.