A 3rd-party Instagram app, known as “The OG App,” which promised an ad-free feed extra like the unique Instagram expertise, has been pulled from Apple’s App Store simply sooner or later after it formally launched. It’s not clear if Apple pulled the app on the request of Meta, however the social community confirmed it had taken “enforcement actions” towards the service.

“This app violates our policies and we’re taking all appropriate enforcement actions,” a Meta spokesperson mentioned in an announcement. The spokesperson declined to elaborate on what these actions have been, or if it had been involved with Apple, however pointed to a blog post outlining Meta’s insurance policies barring clone websites.

“A clone site is a third-party site that duplicates, in whole or in part, the content of an existing site,” Meta explains. On Twitter, the builders of The OG App mentioned their complete crew had been completely banned from Facebook and Instagram on account of their ties to the service.

“Users deserve the right to control what they consume, and OG will continue to defend and fight for that right,” Hardik Patil, on of the app’s founder’s instructed Engadget. He mentioned he had acquired no direct communication from Meta.

The OG App had been within the works for greater than a yr, according to TechCrunch, which reported its preliminary launch. The app’s founders instructed the publication they wished to supply a “cleaner” model of Instagram with out promoting. The app featured customizable feeds with out Reels, steered posts and different newer options which have at occasions been controversial amongst longtime Instagram customers. The Android model of the app is presently nonetheless obtainable.

Meta’s insurance policies have lengthy barred third-party Instagram shoppers, and lately the corporate has filed plenty of lawsuits towards builders who break its guidelines, together with these barring clone websites. At the identical time, the corporate has additionally been accused of utilizing those self same insurance policies to close down authentic researchers’ makes an attempt to review the platform.

However, on this case, it appears the creators of the OG App have been clearly breaking Instagram’s insurance policies. The firm doesn’t provide a public API for builders to construct their very own variations of Instagram, and on Twitter, The OG App mentioned they needed to “reverse engineer” the Android API. The app additionally raised privateness issues about how the builders have been defending customers’ account info.

Despite this, the app had already gained a number of followers as a consequence of its extra simplified — and ad-free — expertise. Instagram has additionally been coping with a backlash towards its aggressive pushing of Reels and really helpful content material. The OG App said it had racked up greater than 10,000 downloads earlier than its elimination from the App Store “because we listened to them and built what they wanted.”