New ‘antisocial’ app Cloak launched to avoid friends

19 Mar 2014

While 99pc of apps encourage greater networking and closer ties, Cloak, a recently released ‘antisocial’ app, aims to help users avoid friends and colleagues by notifying them of their location.

Cloak uses a smartphone user’s location data that would be provided on other social networking apps, such as Instagram and Foursquare.

The app will alert users with a message and alarm when their selected people might be approaching, thus giving them a chance to escape small talk.

Brian Moore, creator of Cloak, told The Washington Post his reason why we would want to avoid people as opposed to connect with them.

“Personally, I think we’ve seen the crest of the big social network. Things like Twitter and Facebook are packed elevators where we’re all crammed in together … I think anti-social stuff is on the rise. You’ll be seeing more and more of these types of projects.”

This is not the first app Moore has created with the mindset of someone who actually dislikes how social media has made our private lives significantly more open.

One of his last successful apps was one called unbaby.me (now called Rather), which would identify and replace baby pictures on your news feed with images of what you’d rather see, such as cats. Rather has since expanded beyond babies to cover other posts, such as sport.

The app is now available for download at the App Store.

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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