Google has removed Chamet, a well-liked but contentious live video chat app, from the Play Store. The company communicated the change and claimed that the app had broken its user-generated content (UGC) guidelines.
In lieu of a response, the business referred to its policy, which states that “apps whose primary purpose is to feature objectionable UGC will be removed from Google Play. Sometime last month, the app was removed from the Play Store.
Chamet, which focused on live video streaming, offered customers the chance to pay to phone a stream’s host in private. According to an article in the Economic Times, female streamers who were dancing to music or simply talking about their lives were very popular on Chamet and other apps. Users had the option to send these streamers presents in addition to video calls by making in-app purchases.
Chamet attempted to steer clear of suggestive material by asking its users to refrain from broadcasting material on “pornography, violence, vulgarity, juveniles, and other related situations. The app, however, was replete with offensive advertising and content.
YouTuber Caleb Friesen tweeted a lengthy thread regarding Chamet’s dubious ownership practices last month, beginning with the business’s sparsely detailed website.
Chamet was the highest-grossing app in a number of Play Store categories. And the evidence supports that. Between January and July, users in India spent more than $13.4 million on Chamet, according to information provided to TechCrunch by analytics company Data.ai. It further stated that over the course of a lifetime, Indians had spent $38 million on Chamet. Last year, they spent $15.4 million on Chamet. In the nation, the app received more than 26 million lifetime downloads.
The company’s research indicated that while Chamet was the top-grossing app, other live video chat apps, including Azar, LiveU, and Honeycam Chat, had made millions of dollars. In India, users spent more money overall on this category of applications last year than they did on another high-spending category, dating, which had annual spending of $42.2 million.
Google did not say whether it intended to take the same step against other live video chat applications.
