Apple has pulled an iOS app from the App store called “Vybe Together” that promoted secret private parties during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Verge reports the app billed itself as a place to organize and attend secret parties, with its now-defunct website using the tagline “Get your rebel on. Get your party on.”
App users could organize parties and approve other users to attend the event. Approved attendees would receive the address of the event two hours before the party was set to start.
Such gatherings would have been illegal under current pandemic restrictions in most of the U.S. — which likely explains why the app required users to submit a profile for approval before they were allowed on.
The app has been removed from the Apple App Store, had its account on TikTok banned, and scrubbed most of its online presence. The app’s creators told The Verge that Apple was the one to take it off the App Store.
The report says the website’s FAQ page acknowledged the danger of the pandemic but said the app was designed to promote “small gatherings” rather than “large scale parties.”
Before the company was banned from the photo-sharing platform, Vybe Together’s account had a single post which read: “Blown out of proportion by the media. We DO NOT CONDONE LARGE GATHERINGS.”