What is Yubo, the app the Uvalde school shooter used to meet strangers before his killings?
- The Uvalde, Texas, school shooter met several people ahead of the killings using Yubo.
- Yubo is a social-media app created by developers in Paris.
- The app has tens of millions of users, and is aimed towards teens.
The 18-year-old man who police say shot and killed 19 children and 2 adult staff members at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, used a social-media app called Yubo to message several people ahead of the massacre.
The gunman used the app and met multiple people on it, according to a report from The New York Times, including a 15-year-old girl living in Germany. In the hours before the attack on Tuesday afternoon, the shooter sent messages to her about his plans to shoot his grandmother and "shoot up" the school.
The girl, identified by The Times as Cece, said she first met the gunman on Yubo about two weeks prior to the shooting. Days after the shooter's 18th birthday, Cece said the shooter video called her from a gun store and told her he was purchasing an AR-15 rifle. He also sent her a picture of a box that he said contained ammunition, and eventually, on the day of the shooting, told her about his plans. It is unclear which platforms he used to send these messages.
She told the outlet she didn't believe he would carry out the plan.
The gunman also met another girl, Anita, on Yubo in March, according to VICE News. Anita described Yubo as "Tinder for kids" and said the gunman had asked her to be his girlfriend. Eventually, he contacted her again through Instagram on May 24 with cryptic messages suggesting he was about to take action of some kind, she told VICE News.
Texas Gov. Gregg Abbot said earlier this week the shooter had posted on Facebook that he had shot his grandmother and planned to shoot at the school, though a Facebook spokesperson said those were private messages and not public posts.
In a statement to Insider on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Yubo said the company was "deeply saddened by this unspeakable loss" and was cooperating with law enforcement. Yubo said it wasn't legally able to share information about any Yubo account but said it was "investigating an account that has since been banned from the platform."
What is Yubo?
Yubo — originally called Yellow — is a social-media app based in Paris, France, developed by the app developing company Twelve App. It has had 60 million sign-ups since it was launched in 2015, according to a Wednesday report from TechCrunch, with 20 million of them occurring since 2020.
The app does not allow users to follow other users or to like the content posted to it, unlike other social platforms like Instagram or TikTok. Instead, users can add each other as friends.
The company does not share how many monthly active users it has.
Yubo uses a mix of human moderators and "technical tools" to moderate the content on the platform, according to the company. In a December 2020 interview with the YouTube channel Startup Vision TV, Yubo co-founder and CEO Sacha Lazimi claimed the company was "one of the leaders in terms of real-time moderation," citing its "very strict guidelines."
Lazimi said a Yubo algorithm processed everything visual and textual sent on Yubo to "automatically block any inappropriate behavior." The app also sends real-time notifications to users, he said, to tell them why something they sent was dangerous or inappropriate. The company also uses human moderators, who Lazimi called "safety specialists," to look through content that has been reported by users or by the Yubo algorithm," he said.
Yubo declined to answer questions about how many moderators work at the company, but told Insider on Wednesday that it "recognizes and takes seriously our responsibility for the safety of our users."
"Because of this, Yubo deploys a range of AI detection tools, human moderation and easy and accessible reporting mechanisms," a spokesperson said in a statement to Insider. "This includes implementing advanced AI filters that not only monitor chats, but also video during live streams, by taking second-by-second screenshots and flagging suspicious content to human moderators in real time."
To sign up for Yubo, new users must provide the app with only their first name, birth date, gender, and a photo. Users must also provide Yubo with their cellphone numbers to verify their new account. The app does not require users to share their last name or email address.
Users must be over the age of 13 to access the app. Teens between the ages of 13 and 17 are additionally supposed to obtain parental permission before signing up, and once they are on Yubo are kept separate from the adults who sign up for and use the app, according to Yubo.
According to the app's community guidelines, users are required to use their real birth date and must show their face in at least one of the photos on their profiles. Yubo by the end of this year intends to roll out AI technology from the digital identity company Yoti to verify users' ages, TechCrunch first reported. The app previously asked users it deemed potentially suspicious to show identification to verify their age, the report said.
Once a new user has created their profile, they are directed to choose several topics ranging from TV shows like "The Big Bang Theory," to bands like Arctic Monkeys, to figures like former US President Donald Trump.
On the app's main screen, users are prompted to join random live videos from other users across the globe. Users can also add new friends using a Tinder-esque swipe feature that allows them to swipe left or right on users to decide whether they want to add them. There is also an in-app chat feature to send messages to their friends on Yubo.
Yubo doesn't have ads and its revenue partially relies on users to make in-app purchases of its own currency, which they can use to add friends en masse. Users, for example, can add up to 500 new friends at once for the price of 1,390 YuBucks. For $4.99, users can buy 500 YuBucks. The company this month began offering NFTs called "Rando NFTs," which unlock special features, including hexagon profile pictures and private live streams, according to the app.
Yubo, like many mainstream social media platforms, has in the past been used in connection with criminal activities. In 2019, a 26-year-old Kentucky man was arrested for trying to meet a 12-year-old girl he met online. Authorities said he met the girl using Yubo, according to a report from the Cincinnati Enquirer.
Authorities in Indiana earlier this year were investigating the 2017 murders of two teenage girls, according to ABC7 Chicago. Police asked the public to come forward if they had ever messaged a profile on Yubo they believed to be used by a suspect in the case.
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