Apple has withdrawn an app created by Andrew Tate after accusations that it encouraged misogyny and could be an illegal pyramid scheme.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Before the news that Apple had withdrawn the app, Matt Jury, the lawyer representing the women, said: “Andrew and [his brother] Tristan Tate manipulate their significant online following to promote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.”
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are you really comparing women rights movement to the things a removed like tate is doing ? He is not a minority, he is a lowlife who is actually abusing women.
what the actual fuck?
That isn’t what was said, but what you inferred.
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those are not opinions this is highly predatory behavior and indoctrination of a lowlife which wants to make money with a scheme and by abusing women.
those people don’t need a platform.
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it’s called rule of the house buddy, if you don’t play by the rules you have to fuck off, pretty easy and pretty well established.
question: would you give hitler or stalin a platform?
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Did you actually read your link?
No, you didn’t read it.
Understanding it and having to read the whole Wiki page do not have to go hand in hand; you are misunderstanding jet’s intention, or at the very least you are assuming.
Jet gave an opinion/perspective already and the question was loaded at best, not something which is intended to continue the conversation. Just because Godwin said it should function one way doesn’t actually mean it does. I do not think this is discussing in good faith, and do not see the invoking of “hitler or stalin” is conducive to a quality exchange.
didn’t answer the question buddy…but pretty impressive how you can use wikipedia, I’ll give you that.
Do you understand what Godwin’s Law is? Your “hitler or stalin” question is loaded at best, and makes everything after it pointless, as you are bringing up a hypothetical (and impossibility, since they are dead). Bring up someone living who is not in prison.
Part of the reason it was removed is because he was arrested, and because members of the public asked Apple to remove it. This is the government and private citizens influencing a company to deplatform an absolute removed. And it’s not a whim, that private company has clear and public guidelines for what is allowed on their platform
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This is where everyone gets it wrong. Can you say anything you want? Sure, I suppose so. But there are CONSEQUENCES for what you say. One of those consequences is that a particular bit of speech is frowned upon at best, and made illegal at worst. It would be totally fine to yell “Bomb,” on an airplane if there was never a bomb on an airplane, and never would be. But there has been, and there probably will be again, so you can’t yell that without CONSEQUENCES. The consequences that these asshats are facing for their particular brand of bullshit is that they are being silenced, because they should not be saying the things that they are. Plain and simple. Is speech a right? Sure, until it’s abused, and then the rights of the many override the right to speech of the few.
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No one has a right to make an app, let alone have that app published by a third party company that has a responsibility to their shareholders, the public, and the government. By your definition, CSAM should be allowed on the app store until a judge orders it to be taken down… That’s not how the internet works, and you know it. The internet is about moderation–self, and imposed. Google, Apple, Microsoft, Reddit, Lemmy, and millions of others must rely on self moderation first, and then impose moderation if that fails. Then, and only then, when moderation at the app/website level fails, do these go to court to get at the root of the problem. I’m sorry that you feel moderation infringes on your right to free speech, but seriously, you have the most paper thin arguments for it.
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PWAs are just a shell game for less than savory ideas. I can’t get my app onto a store? That can’t be my fault, it must be the store! I better push that shit myself so that I can make sure everyone gets involved in my pyramid scheme and misogyny. Again, we are into the consequences of free speech, and a PWA will do less to protect you than a store front will. To go back to the bomb analogy, if you built a batch of bombs and took the pallet to Wal-Mart and tried to get them to add you to their vendor list, they’d say “no,” obviously. So, you take the PWA approach and hock them on the street. You are still selling bombs. Just because you took a DIY approach doesn’t suddenly make it OK. Free speech is free speech until it is abused, and then you shut the fuck up and let people live their lives without trying to take advantage of them. The more options we give, the more abuse we will endure. People like Andrew Tate are a stain on society, and I’m totally fine if their right to free speech is taken away. They lost their chance. Give someone else the podium.
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I wish I could breathe in that Utopian air that you seem to be huffing.
You’re the exact caricature of STEM bro lmao
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Let’s say you own a cafe with an open mic night. One day, someone comes in to the open mic night and starts yelling racist slogans and repeating Nazi rhetoric.
You can let them continue because you’re a free speech absolutist, and lose your customers, or you can kick him out.
There is no difference between this and what Apple or YouTube does except for scale.
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Ok, so Andrew Tate can open his own app store. Problem solved.
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Ok, I’ll try to explain the issue with that. Do I have the right to pay someone to kill you? No. Then there’s already a limitation on my speech AND use of private property. How can we reconcile that with free speech? By thinking about why free speech or any human rights matters. I could go on a dissertation here, but I’ll skip what is easy to find online anyway and jump to the conclusion: human rights are positive rights that are intended to protect human dignity (in the philosophical sense of the indivisible and equal worth of all human life), so it follows that free speech only applies to speech that doesn’t go against that goal. If you don’t do this exercise you end up with the Paradox of Tolerance and all human rights crumble like a house of cards.
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A stable society is not one where you can go to all of your neighbors and tell them a random person is a pedophile in order to start a mob in the name of free speech.
A stable society is not one where you can walk into a Walmart and start yelling the N-word but not get kicked out in the name of free speech.
A stable society is not one where you can sexually harass a co-worker without repercussions in the name of free speech.
You don’t want a stable society, you want chaos.
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The post office is a government institution. Apple is not. That is a poor comparison and I think you know that.
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Private company’s policy isn’t dictated by anything but what can make them more money, which is by and large public opinion.
Public opinion is that this guy and his ilk are removed and don’t deserve a platform.
Where your argument falls apart in the internet age, public policy or private policy, is that it’s so easy for this ooze, this tar, this black filth to fill into dark crevasses, one’s you don’t think of, don’t imagine, because they are naturally borne of their time. We don’t have time to even make public policy before they happen and become problems.
We have things like incel communities because these people feel lost, and have banded together to feel some sort of connection because of their joint feelings, but these feelings have a negative direction that leads to them being deeply troubling.
In a normal community these would be nipped in the bud because it wouldn’t travel very far without negative reaction, but with the internet people can find their pockets, positive and negative, and relish in those communities, for better or for worse.
So because a natural word of mouth community can’t rid the spread of these ideals, and our systems of governance, especially internationally, can’t keep up with them, we’re supposed to just let them spread because the internet has this new electric borne free speech?
If the idea can’t stand the germination through natural lifecycles, then why does it deserve to stand an unnatural one?
And so I posit, why does a private entity need to wait for a public one to make a decision, when the general public at large has already made it.
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He can make his own website. Look up LAMP and get to work. You can’t actually be deplatformed from the entire internet so this argument is moot.