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Private Party App Pulled From App Store by Apple (arstechnica.com) 193

Eric Bangeman, writing for ArsTechnica: Despite over 82 million cases and over 1.75 million deaths due to COVID-19, many people are bound and determined to carry on with normal life. For some, that includes attending Saturday night ragers, just like they did in the Before Times. Reports of yet another secret party being broken up by law enforcement have become distressingly common. Getting guests for these secret parties is at least slightly more difficult now that Apple has pulled Vybe Together -- an app with a tagline that invited users to "get their party on" -- from the App Store. The Verge pointed out that the app had largely been flying under the radar until a tweet from Taylor Lorenz of the New York Times brought some unwelcome, but much-needed scrutiny to the app. One of Lorenz's tweets highlighted Vybe Together's TikTok account, which had posted videos of unmasked people partying indoors while advertising New Years Eve parties. According to Business Insider, TikTok has since removed Vybe Together's account for violating community guidelines.
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Private Party App Pulled From App Store by Apple

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  • If Covid were a lot mode deadly, it would probably wipe out the human race, because of too many hardcore stupid people that are incapable of actually understanding anything.

    • by lessSockMorePuppet ( 6778792 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @07:26PM (#60880460) Homepage

      If COVID were more deadly, it would limit its own spread. This is a well-known property of viral epidemics.

      • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Wednesday December 30, 2020 @08:04PM (#60880576)

        This is a common, and dangerous error. A disease that kills *quickly* tends to limit its spread. It's got nothing to do with raw lethality. Untreated HIV infection is nearly 100% lethal, yet it's one of the top three plagues in history and would probably have moved up a couple of slots if we hadn't developed effective treatments.

        COVID-19's survival chances are unchanged if your immune system kills it after two weeks or if you drop dead after two weeks. It spreads because it's contagious before either of those things happen. It's particularly dangerous because it's contagious before you look sick so all the smart monkeys can avoid you.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          This is a common, and dangerous error. A disease that kills *quickly* tends to limit its spread

          And that is a very common mistake you made there: Not reading what was actually written. Where did I say anything about "quickly"? Oh, right, I did not. I said "deadly". Obviously it killing quicker would limit its spreading speed. That is pandemology 101. But if it still kills at the same speed, but many more of those infected? Then that nice imaginary mental safety net you built there for yourself stops working entirely.

          • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            And that is a very common mistake you made there: Not reading what was actually written. Where did I say anything about "quickly"? Oh, right, I did not. I said "deadly".

            You didn't say that. But that post wasn't replying to you. Here was the context:

            You said:
            If Covid were a lot mode (sic) deadly, it would probably wipe out the human race, because of too many hardcore stupid people that are incapable of actually understanding anything.

            lessSockMorePuppet said:
            If COVID were more deadly, it would limit its own spread. This is a well-known property of viral epidemics.

            ceoyoyo said:
            This is a common, and dangerous error. A disease that kills *quickly* tends to limit its spread.

            • by gweihir ( 88907 )

              My mistake. Sometimes it is hard to determine who actually responded to whom. My apologies.

              • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                Yeah, I noticed just yesterday that Slashdot got the hierarchy wrong on one of my posts, showing it as a reply to the parent of the post I replied to, so it might not have been you. :-)

                • by gweihir ( 88907 )

                  Yeah, I noticed just yesterday that Slashdot got the hierarchy wrong on one of my posts, showing it as a reply to the parent of the post I replied to, so it might not have been you. :-)

                  Possibly. I would not rule out that I messed this up though.

          • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            Did you reply to the wrong person?

            You said if COVID was more deadly it might wipe out the human race. LessSockMorePuppet replied to you insisting that more deadly diseases limit their own spread. I replied to *him* that killing quickly is self limiting, not killing itself.

            Unless it's your sock puppet and you spend your days arguing with yourself on Slashdot?

      • It doesn't have to be immediately deadly. You could have something where you are asymptomatic but contagious for a few weeks, then you need to be on a ventilator for a month or you immediately die. Worse would be if something were as contagious but consistently causes problems a generation later like the Zika virus or a life-long disability like Polio can.

        A species threatening virus would be few if any symptoms, highly contagious, and results in a high likelihood of sterility. I wonder if teens and twenties

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Indeed. Nice to see that at least somebody understands what I wrote. The "hardcore stupid" faction can apparently not even see the distinction between "probability of death" and "average time until death", which is the critical point here. Obviously "more deadly" refers to the former, not the latter.

          Also like your non-deadly variant (or rather deadly once-removed). It has the additional problem that it would take quite a while to get noticed if its symptoms are only in the level of a common cold.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        If COVID were more deadly, it would limit its own spread. This is a well-known property of viral epidemics.

        Today, that depends entirely on the incubation period and whether people are infectious before showing symptoms. Classically (where travel takes weeks or months), yes. Modern world? Nope. We have been incredibly lucky so far.

      • If COVID were more deadly, it would limit its own spread. This is a well-known property of viral epidemics.

        But since it isn't, people mostly just getting moderately sick and then becoming immune.

        It's a good thing we didn't overreact or anything.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          As of a few weeks ago, I personally know somebody that had it twice. So much for immunity. Fortunately she did not require hospitalization in either case, but she was still struggling with significantly decreased fitness (she is a hobby athlete) from the first time.

      • by dryeo ( 100693 )

        Yep, the Black Death (actually a bacteria) stopped and mostly vanished after it killed half the population and Smallpox, a virus, well it went right away on its own due to how deadly it was with about a 30% mortality rate.

        • Small box went away because of a nearly 100 year long world wide campaign of vaccination. Before that it had outbreaks over over a span of minimum 4000 years, here and there. Especially in the orient, or what americans call "middle east".

      • There is a huge margin upward in the "deadlyness" - probably a factor of 10 - 20.

      • Actually, it depends on how long those infected get to spread the infection before succumbing to it.

      • If COVID were more deadly, it would limit its own spread. This is a well-known property of viral epidemics.

        Yes and no. If COVID-19 were more deadly it would wipe out the human race. If COVID-19 were deadlier still then it would wipe itself out. This isn't a binary measure, it's two curves which interact with each other and form a nice range of frigging scary conditions. We are well and truly below the point on those curves. The virus would be far more devastating if it were more deadly.

  • ... such an app is just asking for scrutiny. There are a number of groups in the area doing exactly the same thing using Facebook IM. Good luck finding them among the mounds of debris on that site.

  • I'm very concerned about closed device ecosystems where access to software is controlled by a gatekeeper. The old school PC succeeded because anyone could write anything they wanted. The app store model sucks balls and needs to die

  • "many people are bound and determined to carry on with normal life"
    That's because many people are below 70 and not a half dead diabetic chain smoker. But people needlessly throwing parties are idiots.
  • by lsllll ( 830002 )
    WTF is this Gestapo crap? Idiots will be idiots. If these people want to get together and party, new year's eve or not, they will. But allowing Apple to pull an app based on what they "believe" is bad for society is a road we shant go down.
  • Roast me, Slashdot trolls! ;-)

"Ninety percent of baseball is half mental." -- Yogi Berra

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