3 months ago
47
Image Credits:Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto / Getty Images12:34 PM PST · December 19, 2025
Anonymous messaging app NGL announced connected Friday that it has been acquired by Mode Mobile, a smartphone rewards institution that makes wealth by flooding its users with ads.
NGL rapidly climbed the App Store charts aft its motorboat successful precocious 2021, joining a radical of similar apps fashionable among teens that let users to nonstop and person anonymous questions and messages. But it’s been embroiled successful contention for astir of its existence.
Anonymous messaging apps are problematic due to the fact that they tin promote bullying among teens — Snapchat banned third-party apps similar NGL, LMK, Sendit, and YOLO from its level successful 2022 aft a genitor sued the institution for its alleged relation successful her teenage son’s suicide.
NGL besides came nether occurrence for its shady maturation hacking tactics, similar sending fake messages to users that seemed similar they were from existent radical but were really automated by the app. Some users were tricked into paying a $9.99 monthly subscription to get hints astir who sent the messages, which were fake.
After a two-year investigation, the FTC announced successful 2024 that it would prohibition NGL from offering its app to minors — 1 of its astir drastic interventions to support minors from harmful societal media experiences.
“NGL’s bait-and-switch maneuver prompted galore consumers to complain, which NGL executives laughed off, dismissing specified users arsenic ‘suckers’,” the FTC said successful a connection astatine the time. NGL paid a $5 cardinal good to the FTC and complied with its demands.
NGL’s 2 founders, Raj Vir and João Figueiredo, are moving connected from the app, according to Business Insider. The remaining 3 employees of the app volition enactment for Mode Mobile.
Techcrunch event
San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026
Given NGL’s way grounds of dubious maturation hacking, this concern with Mode Mobile seems similar a bully match.
Mode Mobile makes a smartphone, which it calls the “earnphone,” that has “built-in earning features.” The institution claims that users tin marque wealth by performing mundane tasks connected their phone, similar listening to music, playing games, and browsing the web. According to the company’s investor materials, Mode Mobile generates gross from “digital advertizing partners” that “pay for idiosyncratic attraction and engagement.” Basically, your telephone is perpetually flooded with ads, but you mightiness marque capable wealth to bargain a circular of beers astatine a dive bar.
The presumption of the merchantability were not disclosed.
Amanda Silberling is simply a elder writer astatine TechCrunch covering the intersection of exertion and culture. She has besides written for publications similar Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast astir net culture, with subject fabrication writer Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked arsenic a grassroots organizer, depository educator, and movie festival coordinator. She holds a B.A. successful English from the University of Pennsylvania and served arsenic a Princeton successful Asia Fellow successful Laos.
You tin interaction oregon verify outreach from Amanda by emailing amanda@techcrunch.com or via encrypted connection astatine @amanda.100 connected Signal.
English (US) ·