As more and more apps are released, more and more people get offended and in this list we point out some of the most controversial apps of all time.
According to statistics released earlier this year, the Apple App Store on iOS and Google Play on Android are home to over 2.7 million apps between them. And, people have downloaded them over 125 billion times.
With so many downloads there are many opportunities for developers to make money but with so many apps there’s also increased competition. That’s why devs are branching out – sometimes into controversial waters – and often having their apps deleted for it.
It’s these controversial apps that we’ve now collected in this list so you can remind yourself of some of the apps of days gone past (or apps that still exist) that have offended, upset and enraged the masses.
1. Flappy Bird
The app that everybody thinks of when they’re asked to name an app that’s annoyed them, Flappy Bird hit the headlines last year because of its insane difficulty.
The game was simple enough and saw people tap the screen in order to make an aerially challenged bird fly through a series of different sized pipes. However, hitting one of those pipes instantly killed your bird and saw you greeted with a ‘Game Over’ screen for your trouble.
The game’s difficulty caused so much trouble that people began to send Flappy Bird’s creator, Dong Nguyen, masses of hate, eventually leading him to remove the game from stores never to return again. In Flappy Bird’s wake Nguyen has since graced (or plagued, depending on how good you are at it) us with Swing Copters which is even harder than the game before it
2. Bang With Friends
Bang With Friends requires you to have two things: a Facebook account and some friends. And, as the name would suggest, you also have to be 18 or over to use this one.
A play on Words With Friends, the popular Scrabble app, Bang With Friends’ aim isn’t for some word based funtimes but to help friends hook up with one another. It gives you a list of your Facebook friends and lets you select which friends you’d like to ‘bang’. If they’ve said they want to ‘bang’ you too then it will let you know and then the two of you can message one another, presumably to set up an appropriate time to do just that.
3. Snapchat
Also relating to carnal desires is Snapchat. Most people just use it for pulling silly faces and making funny, soon to be deleted videos, but plenty of other people have used it as a multi-media sexting app.
Because of the way that Snapchat’s photos and videos work, users get to stay relatively anonymous. There’s also little risk of someone accidentally discovering your nude photos (or whatever innocence images you’ve sent) as although Snapchat allows users to screenshot images or photos, it doesn’t automatically save them for you.
Not only this but the recent instant messaging addition to Snapchat has only furthered sexting potential rather than taken it away.
4. Tinder
Similar to Bang With Friends at number two, Tinder is an unorthodox dating app. Most people wouldn’t date someone they weren’t attracted to and so, for want of a better phrase, Tinder helps you separate the wheat from the chaff.
Of course, with the app telling you who’s nearby and what they look like before giving you the option to unceremoniously ditch or ‘like’ their photo, Tinder was always going to be controversial. However, the controversial bit of software has also led to 50 engagements and a whopping 75 million matches so it must be doing something right.
5. Exodus International
Much less can be said about this one in terms of ‘doing something right’ though as the aims of the Exodus International app are strictly nefarious.
If you’ve not heard of Exodus International then you’re one of the lucky ones but their mission statement is to use Christianity to “minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality.” So with awful anti-gay views it was always probably that the Exodus International app would be the same.
The app allowed gay users to seek a ‘cure’ for their homosexuality and become heterosexual instead. As if that wasn’t bizarre and offensive enough, Apple awarded it a 4 during the review process to signal that it contained ‘no objectionable content’.
Plenty of people disagreed however, and after over 20,000 of them signed a petition against it, the Exodus International app was taken down.
6. Playboy
The biggest selling point of Playboy is its nudity so when Playboy boss Hugh Hefner claimed that the magazine would soon be coming to the App Store in all of its uncensored glory, plenty of people got excited. Less excited though, was Apple.
Apple keeps a firm ‘no nudity’ policy on the App Store and any apps found to violate that rule will be shown the door. Unwilling to make a lone exception for Playboy, the publication was forced to seek other means for its mobile presence.
7. Big Brother Camera Security
Nowadays, high-end smartphones will set you back by several hundreds of dollars so as a smarpthone user you would want to do everything in your power to stop anyone from stealing it, right?
That’s what Big Brother Camera Security aimed to help with, with the app taking a photo every single time someone unlocked your phone.
While it seemed like a brilliant idea on paper, Apple was forced to shut the app down when it was discovered that the developer had been harvesting user passwords.
8 Buzzed and Tipsy
Finally, Buzzed and Tipsy was an app that wasn’t just controversial but was potentially dangerous and life-threatening too.
The entire aim of Buzzed and Tipsy is to allow intoxicated users to circumvent police breathalyser checks. It would keep you updated of all of the police stops and checkpoints so that if you were drunk or a little bit tipsy, you wouldn’t have to face a police officer and risk getting your license taken away.
The problem with this is that those checks – no matter how much we hate them – are there for a reason. Drunk driving is illegal and can put people’s lives in danger. Apple wasn’t about to allow these risks and possibly contribute to road accidents and alcohol related deaths and so they soon nixed the app after it was released.
Have a controversial app that you think we should have mentioned? Leave a comment and let us know.
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