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At my birthday party last week, my friend Ebby walked over and asked a group of us \u201cWhat\u2019s this Gather app all about?\u201d<\/p>\n
I instantly felt a bit insecure. Of that particular group of friends, I should have been the one with a ready answer. I\u2019m supposed to know about hot new apps. But Gather<\/a> was a mystery.<\/p>\n The next morning, hungover and recovering from the post-birthday blues, I received a text message: \u201cYou have been invited to Gather with 6 of your friends on Gather \u2013 DOWNLOAD LINK.\u201d<\/p>\n The text was sent from a five-digit number, meaning it came from a server instead of a real human\u2019s phone number. But just the night before I had heard a rather reliable friend mention the app, which piqued my curiosity. I downloaded the app but stopped short of creating a username and password. I had already, at least in that moment, lost interest.<\/p>\n Skip forward to that afternoon. My lovely girlfriend walked in the front door and asked if I downloaded something called Gather. She\u2019s smarter than me, so she looked up app reviews before she thoughtlessly followed the instructions of the invite text.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, you spammed everyone,\u201d she said. \u201cLook at this review.\u201d<\/p>\n Let\u2019s do that.<\/p>\n Deep in the weeds of the App Store reviews \u2014 most of which are glowing and composed of near-perfect grammar and spelling (red flag!) \u2014 there is a one-star review with the title \u201cDO NOT GET!!! ITS JUST SPAM\u201d<\/p>\n This app is seemingly a wonderful idea, and looks well made. Despite this, it has a major inconvenience due to the fact that it SENDS A MESSAGE TO ALL OF YOUR CONTACTS ONCE YOU MAKE AN ACCOUNT. This is not only embarrassing to the person supposedly sending the message but unprofessional of the app. It is convenient to be able to send invites to who you want, but that should be OPTIONAL. I received one of these texts saying multiple of my friends invited me to join the app. I downloaded simply to see what it was, but later found that more people from my contacts had been sent the same message without me authorizing it. It was embarrassing to me and it is a terrible awy to try and expand an app such as this. I do not recommend even downloading this app, and I especially do not recommend creating an account.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n ^^^^!!!<\/p>\n Now, I can\u2019t verify the authenticity or inauthenticity of all those four-star and five-star reviews praising Gather\u2019s ease of on-boarding and how insightful it is to have an app that lets you meet up with friends (as though the same app idea hasn\u2019t launched and failed throughout the years, over and over). I can, however, verify that the review above is pretty damn accurate.<\/p>\n In fact, you don\u2019t even have to create an account with Gather to trigger the SMS spam-fest that will soon land in your friends\u2019 (and family\u2019s and colleagues\u2019) inboxes.<\/p>\n A little more investigating yields this Reddit thread<\/a> from a poor guy who had the same exact experience as I did. And then there\u2019s this website<\/a>, with a couple of reviews warning of the spam attack.<\/p>\n And let\u2019s not forget Twitter:<\/p>\n Ok. Whoever keeps joining this Gather app and sending me crap needs to stop. This is getting out of hand.<\/p>\n \u2014 Morgan Sprouse (@atsprouse) April 19, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Idk what this Gather app is. But it seems rather sketch.<\/p>\n \u2014 Grace Smith (@Grace_Smith92) April 19, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n Disengenous buisness practice: mobile app Gather sourcing your contacts texting all on your behalf to download their garbage application<\/p>\n \u2014 Jigesh Parekh (@jetlifejig) April 19, 2017<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n
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