Apple Removes Anti-Vaxx Dating App Unjected From App Store

On July 31, Apple removed the Unjected dating app from its App Store. The tech giant noted that Unjected violated the company's rules related to spreading misinformation about the novel coronavirus, Bloomberg and Business Insider report.

Unjected is a dating app for unvaccinated people. Two women from the US state of Hawaii created it in May 2021. The creators called their product a community of "like-minded people that support medical autonomy and free speech."

Bloomberg specified that Unjected's release coincided with the time other dating apps like Tinder introduced various bonuses for users vaccinated against the coronavirus. The app has been downloaded 18 thousand times in total.

At first, Unjected was just a dating app, but then the creators added a news feed to the app. This update prompted the Google Play store to check the app. As it turned out, the app did not properly moderate unverified information related to vaccination posted by its users, who called vaccines "experimental mRNA gene modifiers," "bioweapons," and "nanotechnology microchips" used to connect people to the 5G network.

The Unjected app is still available on Google Play for now. However, on July 16, Google threatened to remove Unjected from the app store in two weeks if the creators of the application did not improve content moderation. The app eventually removed the social feed to comply with Google's policies, but plans to restore it later.

Unjected was removed from the App Store after Bloomberg contacted Apple about it. The decision was made because Apple requires developers to provide verified health and safety information concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, backed by credible sources.

The moderators of the App Store have already previously blocked Unjected because its users shared misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines in the app.

The app then asked its users externally to avoid keywords like "jabbed" and "microchip" so that the store's algorithms would not detect misinformation. The App Store decided that Unjected deliberately misled the moderators and, therefore, deleted the application.

Unjected has appealed the app's removal from the App Store but does not expect the decision to be changed. Unjected compares the actions of Apple with "censorship" and asks existing users not to remove the app from their devices. The creators also threatened Apple with leaving the app store and announced their intention to create their website.