Gas (app)

Last updated

Gas
Other namesGas App, Melt (former), Crush (former)
Original author(s) Nikita Bier, Isaiah Turner, Dave Schatz, Michael Gutierrez
Developer(s) Discord Inc.
Initial releaseAugust 29, 2022
Final release
1.6.5 / December 7, 2022
Operating system iOS
Predecessor tbh
Size 105.6 MB (iOS)
Available inEnglish

Gas (sometimes stylized in all caps), formerly known as Melt as well as Crush, [1] was an American anonymous social media app. Launched in August 2022, the app is oriented towards high schoolers. [2] The app was developed by Nikita Bier, Isaiah Turner, and former Facebook engineer Dave Schatz. [3]

Contents

Gas was largely based upon the prior tbh app developed by co-founder Nikita Bier, along with Erik Hazzard, Kyle Zaragoza, and Nicolas Ducdodon in September 2017. [4] tbh was acquired by Facebook inc. (now Meta Platforms) on October 16, 2017, [5] and nearly a year later in July 2018 was dissolved, owing to low usage. [6]

Gas follows a similar purpose to tbh in being a social media app oriented towards high schoolers. In the app, users participate in anonymous polls regarding pre-written complimentary statements to their peers, such as "I'd say yes if (blank) asked me out on a date," "I think (blank) is the coolest kid in school," or "would make an ugly face and still look pretty." [7] Winners of said polls receive a "flame." The name of the app is derived from this, with "gassing someone up" being Gen Z slang for complimenting someone. Users can pay a $6.99 subscription that enables "God Mode," which shows hints regarding who voted for them in a poll. [3]

Gas overtook TikTok and BeReal as the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store in October 2022 [3] (the app is currently not available for Android). The app has over 5.1 million downloads as of early November 2022, [1] over a million active users and 300 thousand daily downloads as of October 2022. Currently, the app is available in Canada and the majority of the United States.

On January 17, 2023, Gas was acquired by Discord, however it will remain as a standalone app and the developers of Gas will become Discord staff. [8] [9]

On October 18, 2023, Discord announced that service for Gas would be permanently ending effective November 7, 2023, due to a steep decline in users. Effective November 7, the app became completely unusable. [10]

Controversy regarding human-trafficking

Beginning in October 2022, rumors spread largely throughout TikTok and Snapchat alleged that the app was linked to human trafficking (in particular sex trafficking). [3] According to Bier, the rumor originated with a single user review from China on October 5, [1] and then was disseminated through TikTok accounts with "few to no US teen followers." [4]

Although largely dismissed as a hoax by experts, who cite how the app doesn't log user locations and general anonymity, the hoax became pervasive to the extent that various police departments, school systems, and local news outlets began issuing warnings regarding the app. For instance, on October 31, 2022, the police department of Piedmont, Oklahoma issued a warning to parents, encouraging them to check their children's phones, while on November 3, the Oklahoma Oktaha Public School system stated in a Facebook post that "Children are being kidnapped in other towns and this new app is thought to be the source of predators finding their location." (both statements have since been retracted by Police Chief Scott Singer and Superintendent Jerry Needham respectively). Additionally, local medial outlets such as KOCO in Oklahoma City ran stories making similar statements. [1]

The rumor had a negative impact on the app, with downloads plateauing for a two-week period in late October and with 3% of users in a single day reportedly uninstalling the app. Revenue and ratings have also reportedly dropped and the company's social media accounts have been bombarded with comments labeling them as sex-traffickers. Additionally, the four-person development team has reportedly been bombarded with various death threats as a result. [1]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Instagram</span> Social media platform owned by Meta Platforms

Instagram is a photo and video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with filters, be organized by hashtags, and be associated with a location via geographical tagging. Posts can be shared publicly or with preapproved followers. Users can browse other users' content by tags and locations, view trending content, like photos, and follow other users to add their content to a personal feed. A Meta-operated image-centric social media platform, it is available on iOS, Android, Windows 10, and the web. Users can take photos and edit them using built-in filters and other tools, then share them on other social media platforms like Facebook. It supports 32 languages including English, Hindi, Spanish, French, Korean, and Japanese.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dubsmash</span> American video sharing social media service

Dubsmash was a video sharing social media service application for iOS and Android.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ByteDance</span> Chinese internet technology company

ByteDance Ltd. is a Chinese internet technology company headquartered in Haidian, Beijing and incorporated in the Cayman Islands.

tbh Defunct anonymous social media app in the United States

tbh was an anonymous social media app available in the United States, designed for high school students. The app was launched by Nikita Bier, Erik Hazzard, Kyle Zaragoza, and Nicolas Ducdodon in September 2017. Investors included Greylock Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Founders Fund, Semyon Dukach, Bee Partners, Dorm Room Fund, and American investor Wayne Chang.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">TikTok</span> Video-focused social media platform

TikTok, whose mainland Chinese counterpart is Douyin, is a short-form video hosting service owned by Chinese internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which can range in duration from three seconds to 60 minutes. It can be accessed with a smartphone app.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Likee</span> Social media short-video app

Likee is a short-video creation and sharing app, available for iOS and Android operating systems. It is owned by Singaporean tech firm Likeme Pte. Ltd., whose parent company is JOYY Inc. The founder of Likee is Jason Hu, entrepreneur from Singapore, who previously worked for JOYY.

Social media was used extensively in the 2020 United States presidential election. Both incumbent president Donald Trump and Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden's campaigns employed digital-first advertising strategies, prioritizing digital advertising over print advertising in the wake of the pandemic. Trump had previously utilized his Twitter account to reach his voters and make announcements, both during and after the 2016 election. The Democratic Party nominee Joe Biden also made use of social media networks to express his views and opinions on important events such as the Trump administration's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the protests following the murder of George Floyd, and the controversial appointment of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

Bigo Live is a global social live streaming platform owned by BIGO Technology based in Singapore, which was founded in 2014 by David Li and Jason Hu. As of 2019, Bigo Technology is owned by JOYY.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charli D'Amelio</span> American social media personality (born 2004)

Charli Grace D'Amelio is an American social media personality. She was a competitive dancer for over a decade before starting her social media career in 2019, when she began posting dance videos on the video-sharing platform TikTok. She quickly amassed a large following and subsequently became the most-followed creator on the platform in March 2020 until she was surpassed by Khaby Lame in June 2022. With over 155 million followers, she is the second most-followed person on TikTok, as of 2024.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Triller (app)</span> American social networking service

Triller is an American video-sharing social networking service that was first released for iOS and Android in 2015. The service allows users to create and share short-form videos, including videos set to, or automatically synchronized to, music using artificial intelligence technology. It initially operated as a video editing app before adding social networking features.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avani Gregg</span> American social media personality

Avani Gregg is an American social media personality who first developed a following on TikTok. She plays Gemma in the web series Chicken Girls. She received the Shorty Award for TikToker of the Year in 2019, and was on the Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2020 in the social media category.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Censorship of TikTok</span> Restriction of access to TikTok by governments and organizations

Many countries have imposed past or ongoing restrictions on the video sharing social network TikTok. Bans from government devices usually stem from national security concerns over potential access of data by the Chinese government. Other bans have cited children's well-being and offensive content such as pornography.

There are reports of TikTok censoring political content related to China and other countries as well as content from minority creators. TikTok says that its initial content moderation policies, many of which are no longer applicable, were aimed at reducing divisiveness and were not politically motivated.

Algorithmic radicalization is the concept that recommender algorithms on popular social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook drive users toward progressively more extreme content over time, leading to them developing radicalized extremist political views. Algorithms record user interactions, from likes/dislikes to amount of time spent on posts, to generate endless media aimed to keep users engaged. Through echo chamber channels, the consumer is driven to be more polarized through preferences in media and self-confirmation.

In 2020, the United States government announced that it was considering banning the Chinese social media platform TikTok upon a request from then-president Donald Trump, who viewed the app as a national security threat. The result was that TikTok owner ByteDance—which initially planned on selling a small portion of TikTok to an American company—agreed to divest TikTok to prevent a ban in the United States and in other countries where restrictions are also being considered due to privacy concerns, which themselves are mostly related to its ownership by a firm based in China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Devious lick</span> 2021 TikTok trend promoting vandalism and theft

A devious lick was a challenge in which North American middle school and high school students posted videos of themselves stealing, vandalizing, or showing off one or more items they stole in their school, typically from a bathroom. The trend went viral on TikTok in 2021 and has resulted in the arrests of many students as well as various warnings being issued by police departments. It also allegedly spread to some schools in Latin America, England, Germany, Australia and Latvia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">BeReal</span> French social media app released in 2020

BeReal is a French messaging app released in 2020, developed by Alexis Barreyat and Kévin Perreau. Its main feature is a daily notification that encourages users to share photos with friends of themselves and their day to day life given a randomly selected two-minute window every day. Critics noted its emphasis on authenticity, which some felt crossed the line into the mundane. The name "BeReal" is a pun. Its primary reference relates to its focus on users uploading unpolished photos, while also being a pun of the term b-reel.

Paige Niemann is an American Internet personality. In 2019, she went viral on the video sharing app TikTok for her resemblance to the American singer Ariana Grande.

TikTok has sparked concerns over potential user data collection and influence operations by the Chinese government, leading to restrictions and bans in the United States.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Lorenz, Taylor (November 9, 2022). "How a viral teen app became the center of a sex trafficking hoax". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on November 17, 2022. Retrieved November 19, 2022.
  2. ↑ Billingsley, Kristen (November 16, 2022). "Is Gas App Anonymous? How 'God Mode' Can Reveal Your Identity". ScreenRant. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Towey, Hannah. "A new social media app for high schoolers has dethroned TikTok and BeReal in the App Store rankings — and is surprisingly not toxic". Business Insider. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
  4. 1 2 "A Former Facebook Manager Started America's Top New App". Bloomberg. October 21, 2022. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
  5. ↑ O'Brien, Sara Ashley (October 16, 2017). "Facebook acquires beloved teen app 'tbh'". CNNMoney. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
  6. ↑ "Facebook shuts down tbh and other apps over 'low usage'". Engadget. July 2, 2018. Retrieved November 20, 2022.
  7. ↑ "Teens love the anonymous new Gas app: Here's what parents should know". TODAY.com. January 10, 2023. Retrieved March 6, 2023.
  8. ↑ "Welcoming Gas to Discord".
  9. ↑ Warren, Tom (January 17, 2023). "Discord acquires Gas, the popular app for teens to compliment each other". The Verge. Retrieved March 6, 2023.
  10. ↑ "Discord Shutters Gas, Making It Two in a Row for Gas Founder". The Information. Retrieved October 18, 2023.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.