Social Distance Applications —The Digital Community is Here To Help Fight COVID-19 but Apple Doesn’t Want these Innovations

Building great products is often about software and real-world problems of certain personas. Now humanity is continiously facing a global challenge and it is a priority to almost everyone. The Coronavirus is a threat for the wealthy and the poor, for developers, engineers and designers alike. Our teams at Wildstyle Network and our venture portfolio teamed up to come back with the basic problem to fight the disease: Social Distance. That was at the beginning of the crisis — in Feb/March 2020. Now, weeks later, Apple is the biggest blocker for community developed solutions. Here’s why.

What is SocDist?

Social Distance App helps everyone with a mobile phone to keep a physical distance to other people. The problem oftentimes is that we’re not used to keeping distance in our busy lives. Standing at the cash desk, meeting neighbors at the garden fence or chatting to good friends. These are the moments when we’re headless and when we don’t remind ourselves that a distance of 2 Meters (or 6ft) is the most viable weapon against the virus.

How does SocDist work?

The app measures Bluetooth signals of other devices around you. The algorithm understands and differs from devices you’re familiar with. Users can manually add devices of family members.

If any other device gets closer than 2m (or 6ft), your Social Distance app starts to vibrate 3x. The app then measures again if unknown devices have left the proximity. If they remain, your phone vibrates again.

SocDist with Power and Data Efficiency, full Privacy

The app doesn’t require you to login or register to use the service. It’s plain, straight forward and simple.

The app also doesn’t need any data to measure other devices to warn you. Bluetooth 4.0’s (BLE) is used and it’s a low power consumption.

Oh, the app works offline, too! The teams designed it to work in your grocery store and everywhere else.

SocDist is MVP and Open Source

Social Distance is not a venture. It’s not a startup. The development teams of Wildstyle Network and the team behind the Proximal Internet just wanted to start an MVP and we all understand SocDist as a springboard to develop solutions and ideas together with the community.

SocDist is low tech and underwhelmingly barrierless. Simplicity is the concept.

This springboard is here to start quick and to inspire others. If you want to add your branch to SocDist, then we can test and see how our ideas unfold in the real world.

Why we went Open Source? Becasue we think that a solution is not owned by governments or scientist. The entire tech community can contribute. Whether it’s an idea how to fork the app or the use case or a new interface design. Let’s do this together!

We’re currently preparing Github so that everyone can contribute.

Who can contribute to Social Distance?

No, this is not irony. Of course, if you keep social distance because you are hyper-aware of the things around you, then you don’t need the SocDist app on your phone. Not yet! Keeping social distance is just the beginning.
Here’s who can contribute to the app:

• Engineers
• UX Designers
• UI Designers
• Android and iOS Developers
• Companies, Startups, NGOs

SocDist is not-for-profit! Please keep that in mind when you start your fork.

Why Apple doesn’t want a Social Distance App in their App Store.

A brief history of SocDist App events: The Social Distance app idea was born late February. Over the weekend, the team hacked together a prototype. The beta team has then tested the app for two weeks, refined copy, visuals and the technology. We then sent the app to the Apple AppStore for approval on April 9th. The app was rejected. The reason:

We noticed that your app requests the user’s consent to access their Bluetooth but does not clarify the use of the Bluetooth in the applicable purpose string.

Of course. Bluetooth. Well, it’s the Apple protocoll. At this moment, the team was already sure that there are more reasons for the rejection. After trying to clarify this we got this:

We found in our review that your app provides services or requires sensitive user information related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis, services and information related to it are considered to be part of the healthcare industry.

Sensitive user information? Dear Apple Inc., we never mentioned COVID-19 nor do we provide any “sensitive information”. The purpose of the app is privacy and a simple social distance measurement that doesn’t requrie data, login or other sensitive informations.

Okay Apple Inc. We get it. You don’t want the tech community to help. A simple guidance change would have enabled the power of your developer community to help fight the the desease. It would have inspired a community. The same community that made you grow, dear Apple Inc.

Hello Google PlayStore.

App submitted. The review time was significantly longer than with other apps. However, we got an approval early May.
If Apple’s AppStore wouldn’t have eaten our dev time and without leaving us hanging for so long, we would have been able to fulfill the upgrade path earlier. Would this have saved lifes? Well, at least we would have been contributing to test and learn from privacy compliant solutions.
Wait, did we say we got approved by Google? We have to correct ourselves here: Google Play has locked the app just now. We’ll update you with news asap.

Learn more about Social Distance here.

Many folks in the tech and digital industry say that they want to change the world to the better. Now it’s time to prove that.
If you want to reach out right now, feel free: Steve (dot) Nitzschner (at) Wildstyle-Network.com or drop me a note on Twitter: @StevNitz