Apple has withdrawn an app created by Andrew Tate after accusations that it encouraged misogyny and could be an illegal pyramid scheme.
Tate created the app, Real World Portal, after the closure of his “Hustler’s University”, which was an online academy for his fans, promising to assist them in making thousands of pounds while helping Tate’s videos on social media, which have been described as misogynistic, to go viral.
McCue Jury & Partners, the firm representing four British women who have accused Tate of sexual and physical assault, claimed that the app deliberately targets young men and encourages misogyny, including members of the app sharing techniques on how to control and exploit women. The firm has also claimed that there is evidence to suggest that the app is an illegal pyramid scheme, with members being charged $49.99 a month to join.
Last week, the Real World Portal app was removed from Google’s Play store after claims that it was an illegal pyramid scheme and encouraged misogyny.
On Friday night Apple also said it had removed it from its app store. It followed a letter from the legal firm asking Apple to consider whether the app was in line with its policies and whether the company was exposing itself to any corporate liability in hosting it on its platform.
Part of the letter, dated 15 September, said: “We are writing because our clients are extremely concerned that you are hosting Tate’s Real World Portal (RWP) mobile application on your Apple Store … In continuing to host RWP, not only is Apple potentially indirectly financing Tate’s alleged criminal activities but is aiding the spread of his misogynistic teachings.”
The firm had claimed that Apple was directly profiting from hosting the app, with the company taking 30% in royalties from apps and in-app purchases.
Four women in their late 20s and early 30s are pursuing civil proceedings against Tate over alleged offences between 2013 and 2016 while he was still living in the UK.
Before the news that Apple had withdrawn the app, Matt Jury, the lawyer representing the women, said: “Andrew and [his brother] Tristan Tate manipulate their significant online following to promote subscriptions to Real World Portal. From there, the benefits to users are entirely reliant upon new subscribers joining the platform.
“There is also significant evidence that this scheme is directly targeting boys and teenagers and, in my view, is nothing more than an exploitative app which has no place on Apple’s platform.”
Tate is awaiting trial in Romania on charges of human trafficking. He and Tristan were charged in June, along with two Romanian female suspects, with human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. The suspects have denied the allegations.
A spokesperson for Andrew Tate said: “We unequivocally deny the allegations that ‘The Real World’ app operates as a pyramid scheme or perpetuates harmful techniques aimed at exploiting any individuals, particularly women. The user community, which includes a significant number of women within the 200,000-strong user base, can attest to the positive impact and educational value the app provides.
“Accusations suggesting otherwise are unfounded, lacking credible evidence, and seem to be part of a targeted campaign against Andrew Tate, a known supporter and promoter of the platform. ‘The Real World’ maintains a commitment to complete transparency, ensuring compliance with all legal and ethical standards. We invite sceptics to examine the app independently and affirm that it operates in accordance with legal and moral requirements.
“The platform is designed as an educational tool that fosters healthy habit formation, financial literacy, and self-discipline, with thousands of lives positively impacted. The decision by Google Play is being appealed.”
I actually like that policy. In years I haven't had the desire or need to install random apps from websites, and I can't think of anything I'm missing that is excluded from the app store. People do stupid things with security when they install apps from random websites, because most users have no clue at all about privacy or what rogue apps can do. This is especially dangerous with kids and older people. Considering phones can give away location, record audio and video, banking passwords and so on, I think locking them down is fine. Regular apps are bad enough. We don't need more phone malware.
I couldn't use my phone at all, without side loading apps. F droid makes side loading open source apps extremely easy, most the apps I use on a daily basis are side-loaded via f droid. My browser, my password manager, my video player, my podcast player, my map system, my VPN, my secure messenger,... none of which are on the main app store.
I'm only using this as an illustration that there is a use case for side loading your own independent ecosystem onto your phone. It gives users more choice
You should check out "obtainium". You can install apps directly from source. https://github.com/ImranR98/Obtainium
That's super interesting. I looked at the burrito video, justifying the migration away from f Droid. And I agree, there's a lot of good reasons to use the developer keys directly. One nice benefit of f droid though is ensuring the source code matches the binary. With their recent progress in reproducible builds, and using the developer signing keys for those builds, we get the best of both worlds.
I use obtainium for my password manager and a few other apps, i also use f-droid for other apps. The way i understood it, is that f droid uses their own keys for signing apps, different from the source of those apps. But i may be mistaken on that. Also, i use graphene os, even though i believe burritos uninstalled it due to personal issues with the origonal copperhead creator. It still is, imo, the most secure os
You are correct. F Droid uses their own signing keys to sign the builds they've made. The reproducible builds are verified by fdroid but pass through signed by the developer.
Then we're getting two levels of protection, fdroid attest that the source code used to build the application is the public source code, and the developer attests that the binary matches the code.
But it's the early days of reproducible builds, I think they just had an announcement where 120 builds are reproducible.