Apple has pulled a US app that encouraged users to meet at secret underground collections during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Vybe Together app, which promotes private parties, has been removed from the Apple App Store, had its TikTok account banned, and scrubbed most of its online presence, with the app’s creators telling The Verge that Apple had banned it.
Vybe Together billed itself on TikTok and its website as a place to organize and attend mostly illegal parties in violation of social distance laws by using the tagline “Get your rebel on. Get your party on.”
“Do you miss playing beer pong, flirting with strangers, and generally just having a lot of fun with the crew? Vybe is here for you,” read the website.
Users were asked to submit a profile before they were allowed to register, an application process that involved submitting the applicant’s Instagram handle, as well as uploading photos of themselves.
The application allowed people to create private events “no randoms will appear” at. Users can then apply for event invitations, hoping the host considers them “interesting” enough to approve them.
Once on the list, guests would wait to receive details about the venue two hours before the event’s start time.
One of the co-founders of Vybe Together said that the app had a few thousand users, and that a few thousand additional applicants had requested access since the company started publishing videos on TikTok.
The app’s FAQ page – now deleted – acknowledged that Covid-19 was “a major health problem for the country, our communities, our friends and family”, but claimed that the app was designed to promote “small gatherings” instead of “large parties” , Which it described as “dangerous”.
“But Vybe is a compromise […] We could live, at least a little in these times with Vybe. ”
It is still unclear whether the app – which has only a few hundred followers on Instagram – essentially started illegal or unsafe gatherings, even though it promoted “gatherings every weekend” in a TikTok video.
The creators of Vybe Together have been contacted for comment. Their Instagram account contains the message: “The App Store took us down !!! We will be back !! “
