Apple Pulls App That List Secret Parties During The COVID-19 Pandemic

The iPhone app ‘Vybe’ gets pulled from the app store for promoting COVID-19 underground parties, urging users to rebel against safety protocols.

Source: (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images) / (Luis Sinco/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

We are weeks away from the official one year mark of the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, and some have lost everything they’ve known their entire lives. While everyone knows the risks and harm that comes from not taking this virus seriously, some people simply do not care.

During the stay-at-home orders, a few people decided to start throwing underground house parties and some bar owners even refused to shut down. According to TheVerge, the Vybe app went a step further by listing underground parties and urging people to rebel against safety protocols.

An iOS app called Vybe Together that promoted private parties during the COVID-19 pandemic 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.

Vybe Together billed itself on TikTok and its website as a place to organize and attend underground parties, using the tagline “Get your rebel on. Get your party on.” Organizers would have to approve everyone who wanted to attend, and the ones that got approved would receive the address two hours before the event. Most of these gatherings would have been illegal under current US pandemic restrictions — which may explain why the app required you to submit a profile for approval before you were allowed on.

We know these trying times have pulled the entrepreneur out of everyone but there had to be a different direction this app could have taken besides underground parties while thousands are dying.