Most talked about apps of 2019: PUBG Mobile, FaceApp, WhatsApp and more
Among the best smartphones and apps, we also have the most-talked-about apps, both for good and bad reasons. Let's see what all apps are there:
2019 has been a year of new tech trends, tech controversies, and a lot more. Among the best smartphones and apps of 2019, there also were apps that went viral in the tech world and people couldn’t help and stop talking about them, be it positively or negatively.
Therefore, here’s the list of the most-talked-about apps of 2019 and why they became (in)famous:
Most-talked-about apps of 2019
PUBG Mobile
Since the time PUBG or PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds reached our smartphones, it became popular as PUBG Mobile. The battle royale game became the most popular game of 2019 and infamous too.
While people were hooked to their smartphones playing the game and getting chicken dinner, the game was highly-criticized for engrossing people to an extent that it led to deaths, theft, and all things bad. People died because they didn’t pay attention or were too fatigued by the game.
For this, people wanted the game to be banned, especially in India and it did get banned in some parts of the country. There were restrictions on gameplay as well, as a result of a new update so that people don’t play it much. Nonetheless, the bans got lifted and currently, it is being played a lot. Just remember, don’t overplay it.
Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp also made headlines in 2019, along with Facebook and even Instagram. While data breach was a reason, another prominent reason was fake news.
Fake news proved to be another controversial element of the tech world and WhatsApp was one of the agents of fake news. To curb the spread of fake news, WhatsApp did come up with ways and we hope 2020 doesn’t become the year of fake news.
Another reason why WhatsApp was the most-talked-about app is that it got hit by the Pegasus malware, which affected many Indians.
FaceApp
FaceApp is another app that went totally viral in 2019. The app gained popularity in 2019 due to the fun-filled age-swapping game, which everyone started loving. However, the app became famous for the wrong reasons due to the privacy issues it raised.
The app was believed to be accessing a user’s gallery even when the access was denied. Another privacy concern was that when a user selects an image to edit within FaceApp and turns on airplane mode, the image gets blurred with a pop-up that it can’t be uploaded. However, the image was being sent to the app’s cloud storage.
To this, FaceApp suggested that it never stored user data for more than 48 hours.
Mark Zuckerberg was engulfed by controversies when we got to know our data isn’t safe with his social media platform Facebook, following the Cambridge Analytica fiasco. While all thought it will be forgotten by all, the exact opposite happened. Despite all the data breaches, Facebook was a part of, it didn’t stop and continued to leak our data.
Be it phone numbers, email addresses, almost everything got leaked. In addition to this, Facebook was also criticized for racial, gender discrimination via its ads.
For all this, Zuckerberg even faced federal charges, was presented in the court, had to pay fines, and even had to change a lot of its policies. We hope it becomes a safer social media platform soon.
DeepNude
DeepNude proved to be one of the most controversial apps of 2019 as it used AI the wrong way. The app went viral as it used the Deepfake tech to create nude images, especially of women. And this was done with a single click.
It is suggested that the app developer was inspired by the X-Ray glasses ad and used the Pix2Pix network architecture, which converts B/W images into colored ones. Following this, the developer would train the neural network with the help of a set of 10,000 images of undressed women.
The app was soon taken down and it isn’t available.
TikTok
The popular video-sharing platform rose to popularity as all became TikTokers, specifically in India. However, it soon turned sour for the app as the ByteDance-owned was accused of promoting pornography and adult content.
Soon after, the app was banned in India for a short while due to the same reason. The ban was lifted soon.
The app tried to introduce changes to become a safer place and is still the widely-used social media app.
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