Ah, yes… if you like the rest of us have spent the past week or three behind closed doors, only poking your head out of your front door to collect groceries and wave off your Deliveroo driver, chances are you’ve been obsessively using Houseparty to maintain connection with people in the real world. The app, which functions as chaotically as any house party you went to in your final years of high school, allows you to jump online, hijack friends’ video calls and show face totally uninvited. It’s intrusive but fun; a reminder of what lies for us out in the real world (remember that?) once it’s safe to go outside again.
But just like everything else we find pleasure in in the 21st century, Houseparty found itself in the firing line of cancel culture over the past few days, as rumours spread that using the app had led some people’s Netflix, Spotify, eBay and Instagram accounts to be hacked. It started as internet hearsay but turned into tabloid news, before, all of a sudden, the Mirror started issuing advice on how boomers could uninstall it! The internet is sentient and it’s coming to get you!
Houseparty, understandably pissed, bounced back with a tweet that suggested the “unfounded” claims were part of a professionally set up smear campaign, perhaps by a competitor who’s seen a decrease in usage of their own platform in the wake of Houseparty’s success. So they came for blood, posting a tweet that read: “We are investigating indications that the recent hacking rumors were spread by a paid commercial smear campaign to harm Houseparty. We are offering a $1,000,000 bounty for the first individual to provide proof of such a campaign to bounty@houseparty.com.”
If there’s any evidence that the tech industry is an absolute hellfire of throwaway cash and inflated egos, here it is: an eye-watering amount of money offered up for anybody who can find concrete evidence that, another popular video-calling app (of which there are many that we won’t specify in case our legal team yells at us) made a petty move to try and undercut the competition.
Still, we won’t blame you for taking advantage of that wild and tantalising offer. Tech geeks, teenagers with too much time on their hands and Colleen Rooney – join forces, girls! This is a crisis that the inquisitive and cash-strapped can really reap the rewards of.