UPDATE: Apple has removed The OG app from the App Store, the developers confirmed on Twitter.
In a thread, the app’s creators said they made several changes to the app at Apple’s request before it was approved for inclusion in the App Store. “There are dozens of other apps in the top charts that replicate the Instagram user experience that have been around for years,” they said.
Before its removal, the OG app had been downloaded 10,000 times. “We’re working on re-publishing OG to the App Store,” the developers say. It’s still live on the Google Play Store.
Tweet (Opens in a new window)
Original story: Meta’s ongoing quest to turn Instagram into TikTok 2.0 has buried users under a barrage of suggested posts and ads.
Despite the audience backlash, the company doesn’t seem to be backing away from its video-first strategy. So developers have taken matters into their own hands with The OG App (Opens in a new window), nostalgic software that harkens back to the good old days of sharing leaked photos.
Available on iOS and Android (Opens in a new window), the back-to-basics app is almost an Instagram clone, with the familiar design, direct messages, and notifications. The main difference is your ability to turn off ads, suggested content, and other “distractions” like Reels and the Discover page.
Users also create curated personal feeds and pause the update for 24 hours, according to Digital Trends (Opens in a new window), which notes that the OG app has some issues to work out, most notably the login process : Some people have registered. no problem, while others got error messages.
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The platform can also seem slow as it pulls second-hand information from IG and filters it through OG. As TechCrunch points out (Opens in a new window), this means that the developers of the OG app rely on Meta’s APIs, which the company could technically revoke at any time (on Twitter), but the developers of OG tell TechCrunch they’re not concerned. this right now
OG’s website hints at an app that hosts “all your social channels,” including TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube, and Reddit. Other than a “Coming Soon” banner, however, details are scarce.
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