The Russian man claiming an Apple app turned him gay has decided to drop his lawsuit.
At the start of this month, news of a man named D.E. Razumilov suing Apple started to trend. In the filed suit, Razumilv claimed that he had been turned gay by an app he’d used on his iPhone. The story goes that he tried to buy BitCoin through an app, but instead received a different cryptocurrency called GayCoin. In addition, the purchase came with a message saying, “Don’t judge until you try.”
“I thought, indeed, how can I judge something without trying it? And decided to try same-sex relationships,” said the man in his lawsuit, which was then translated to English by the Moscow Times. “I can say after the passage of two months that I’m mired in intimacy with a member of my own sex and can’t get out. I have a steady boyfriend and I don’t know how to explain it to my parents. After receiving the aforementioned message, my life has changed for the worse and will never be normal again.”
Razumilov then decided to sue Apple for more than $15,000 in damages. He claims the app downloaded on his phone caused him “moral suffering and harm to mental health.” As for why he was suing Apple, it was with the belief that the tech company is responsible for anything that happens on apps sold in its store. As such, the app store is responsible for the text “coercing” Razumilov into a homosexual life.
In that latter sense, the lawsuit is somewhat like other suits and situations surrounding gay apps in the past year or two.
At the start of this year, a lawsuit against Grindr looked like it could affect the landscape of the tech industry and the future of how apps work. After his ex-boyfriend created several catfish accounts on Grindr with his photos and personal info, which led to strangers appearing at his home and workplace, one New York man sued Grindr with the belief that the app’s company is responsible for not managing its users more closely.
In addition, Tumblr and Scruff were also affected by tightening down on how users use their services. Tumblr announced the banning of adult content after child pornography slipped through its censors. Tumblr chose to do so after Apple deleted its app from the app store. The internet breaking ban announcement was Tumblr’s way of getting back in Apple’s good graces.
As for Scruff, the app had a similar situation. After Apple threatened to delete the app from its store, Scruff made an announcement of stricter rules on how users could express themselves in their profiles and pictures. All three situations show that Apple acknowledges having some responsibility for how users use apps on its store. As such, maybe Razumilov somewhat had a valid argument to his lawsuit (despite the ridiculousness of the specific case).
But now, Razumilov’s lawyer, Sapizhat Gusnieva, states that Razumilov is dropping the lawsuit. The attorney says that his client is dropping the suit after the initial court date due to “haters” finding his contact information and “Apple supporters” writing to him.
“Today we abandoned the legal demands,” Gusnieva said, before adding that Razumilov “no longer wants to continue with the case.”
So would Razumilov have won or, at least, made headway with his case? Now, we’ll never know.
Sources: Dailymail, ABS-CBN News, The Moscow Times
