Apple pulls right-wing conspiracy QDrops app from the App Store. It sends users alerts about a conspiracy that has ties to “Pizzagate.” An inquiry from NBC News seems to be the reason it was pulled. Why it passed Apple’s review team is baffling.
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QAnon
The conspiracy theory is called QAnon, and it’s an offshoot of Pizzagate, which is an insane, extremist theory that Hillary Clinton runs a child sex trafficking ring out of the basement of a pizza shop in Washington that doesn’t even have a basement.
QAnon originates from 4Chan, a social media website that seems to originate many of these batsh*t crazy people. As Gizmodo puts it,
QAnon is an incredibly elaborate online conspiracist yarn that more or less boils down to a series of posts on message board 4chan and its bastard offspring 8chan from “Q,” supposedly a government agent with high security clearance, claiming that Donald Trump is preparing to turn the tables on deep state agents guilty of everything from child sex trafficking to false flag mass shootings in a coming purge called “The Storm.”
The QDrops app was developed by Richard and Adalita Brown under the name Tiger Team Inc,. Embarrassingly for Apple, at one point it was the number 10 app on the App Store soon after it launched in April, as well as number one in the entertainment section.
Apple released a statement to NBC, saying:
The App Store has always supported all points of view being represented, as long as the apps are respectful to users with differing opinions and the quality of the experience is great. We have published clear guidelines that developers must follow in order for their apps to be distributed by the App Store, designed to foster innovation and provide a safe environment to all of our users. We will take swift action to remove any apps that violate our guidelines or the law—we take this responsibility very seriously.
According to the QDrops Twitter account, the developers claim to have it back in the App Store soon.
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I wonder how. I mean it has been blocked for being what it is and dealing with the crazy, almost seditious, bs that it does. Will they relaunch it as a pasta recipe app? Maybe another Minecraft clone?