Reface, the popular face-swapping app, decided to leave Russia after Russian citizens gave it a lot of one-star reviews.
A man uses his smartphone walking along a street in Moscow on a sunny spring day on March 30, 2021. (Photo by NATALIA KOLESNIKOVA / AFP)
The face-swapping app doesn't like the boycott-like movement of the people in Russia, especially when it is already making efforts to fight the censorship happening in Kremlin.
Before Reface pulled out of Russia, it used its platform to share messages against the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict with its users.
The app company also asks them to support the sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other countries against the Russian government.
Reface Flooded With One-Star Reviews
According to Tech Crunch's latest report, Reface's efforts against the conflict between Russia and Ukraine already sent millions of messages.
An illustration picture taken on November 28, 2019 in Moscow shows an Apple map with the Crimea peninsula on a smartphone screen. - Ukraine has lashed out at Apple for showing the annexed Crimea peninsula as part of Russia, saying the US tech giant did not "give a damn" about the pain of the Ukrainian people. Russian lawmakers said on Wednesday that Apple had complied with a demand from Moscow for Crimea to appear as Russian territory on its maps and weather apps.
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The tech startup said that it was able to send 13 million push notifications to around 2 million Russian Reface accounts. But, it seems like many residents don't like this activity.
Instead of supporting Reface, they flooded the face-swapping app with one-star reviews.
"Realizing that our efforts were not enough to compete with total state propaganda in Russia, we decided to remove the Reface app from Russian App Store and Google Play," said Reface.
The company said that Russians who were able to download and subscribe before Mar. 10 can still use the app. But, new users will no longer be able to install or create an account.
Russia Already lost Thousands of Apps
Based on the latest data of Sensor Tower, the Apple App Store in Russia has already lost around 7,000 applications ever since the conflict between the two countries began.
Aside from Russia, Belarus is also affected by the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict, with almost 6,000 apps pulling out from the country.
As of the moment, more and more tech startups are still voicing their concerns regarding the issue between Russia and Ukraine.
In other news, Russia calms Roscosmos ISS abandonment rumors. Meanwhile, Sony's anime streaming service was suspended in Russia.
For more news updates about app pull-outs in Russia and other related topics, always keep your tabs open here at TechTimes.
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Written by: Griffin Davis
