Do you guys ever get emails from an older relative claiming things like “The FCC is opening up its Do Not Call list for just 7 days! Register your number now or you’ll never be able to stop those spam calls!” And then you go to the FCC site and the Do Not Call list is always open for new registrations and you realize part of the cause of all these spam calls is people’s ignorance. That they spend all their energy (falsely) worrying about why the government won’t let them register their phone number instead of worrying about why the government isn’t effectively enforcing the laws that should already be handling the problem…
There’s a tangible, political opportunity cost to misplaced indignation. Especially when the topic involves something like child sex trafficking, where even the hint of not fully agreeing with the popular outrage is twisted to accuse you of being “one of them”. In a world of ever-increasing uncertainty about truth, it is very important for people to be careful about claims, especially if they’re appeals to emotion.
Did you guys know that you can actually just look up links, instead of blindly wondering about all the horrid possibilities that they could represent? In this case, the link is to Google’s Play Store for an app by the name of IRL. It’s a new app purporting to be a vehicle for people to coordinate plans in meatspace with friends.
A shallow search will bring up a lot of annoyed people who are receiving similar texts to the one pictured above.
People are making a lot of claims that the app harvests a user’s contacts and then texts out these links to try and increase the user base. Some are even claiming that selling user data is the company’s business.
But what you’ll also find is that IRL has been featured on CNBC and TechCrunch in a positive light [1] [2], the CEO (Abraham Shafi) is going out of his way to address the negative press [1], and the app has even been featured in the Apple store as an editor’s choice. Moreover, the personnel working for the company include a lot of public figures, such as Scott Banister, who has a lengthy list of public work in the tech industry, and listed sources of venture capital, such as Founders Fund [1]. As well, while the target audience of the app being teenagers is worthy of scrutiny, the design of the app only lets one interact with people on your phone’s contact list and people on your friends’ contact lists [1].
However, there are still a lot of misgivings about the app. The CEO used to run another company that created an app called Gather. It had a similar focus, but leaned even more into spamvertising [1]. As well, IRL itself appears to constantly ask for permissions to things like contacts and GPS location [1], that certainly can facilitate it reaching out to anyone you know. And that seems the be the real sin of IRL and Gather.
More succinctly, the tweets claiming that Gather and IRL are sex trafficking apps are known fear mongering (https://gizmodo.com/that-viral-tweet-linking-social-app-irl-with-sex-traffi-1828630042) (https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/irl-texts-trafficking/). The people who run the company are public figures who have taken no steps to hide their identities. The funding for the company is through registered venture capital firms. The apps have not shown any signs of malware that install tracking software, only asking (constantly) for permissions through the proper APIs in the phone. And the design of the app itself should prevent 3rd-degree strangers from even being able to know you’re on the app, let along voting or “bidding” on your profile picture.
The app is almost certainly worth keeping away from. But that’s because it’s collecting a lot of user data and sending unsolicited texts (even if the CEO has stacks of emails from people wanting texts). Not because it’s a secret cabal of Silicon Valley sex traffickers. The dangers of your data being misused are present in EVERY app and website you use. Demonizing a scapegoat like IRL only obfuscates the responsibility that we all have to safeguard our data from EVERYONE and to demand that ALL of our apps and websites do a better job of protecting our privacy.
