Appfigures, a service that tracks app usage statistics, has revealed that following the “Signalgate” incident where high-ranking US government officials, including Deputy Assistant to the President JD Vance and several ministers, formed a secret Signal group to discuss the insurrection in Yemen and inadvertently added a journalist from The Atlantic.
As the Signal group made headlines throughout the week in the United States, it helped raise awareness of the app, leading to a 28% increase in global downloads, a 45% increase in US downloads, and a 42% increase in Yemen downloads. This surge catapulted the app from rank 50 in Yemen to rank 9 almost instantly.
Some individuals downloading Signal may have hoped to be pulled into a secretive group with insider information crucial to national leaders.
Source – TechCrunch, Image from @whitehouse
TLDR: The “Signalgate” incident involving US government officials led to a significant increase in Signal app downloads globally, particularly in the US and Yemen, as the app gained notoriety for being associated with a secret group discussing Yemeni insurrection.
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