Earlier this week, Mitch Lowe, CEO of the popular all-you-can-eat movie subscription service MoviePass, made headlines for bragging about how the app can track the location of its users. Shortly after that comment, MoviePass issued a statement clarifying its actions, and now the iOS app has been updated to remove the features…
In its statement on Monday to The Verge, MoviePass explained that it is “exploring utilizing location-based marketing” as a way to improve the “overall experience” for users. The company promised that it will not sell the data, but rather use to market “discounts on transportation, coupons for nearby restaurants,” and more.
Essentially, it seems the goal of MoviePass’ followup statement was to ease the concerns of privacy-focused users and to say it wasn’t doing any sort of tracking, yet, and is only exploring the possibilities. Today’s MoviePass for iOS update seems to imply that the basis of the tracking features were there, but has now been removed.
In the change log for the update, MoviePass says that it has “removed the unused app location capability” entirely. The company doesn’t offer any further details as to what exactly this means and what sort of capabilities there were.
Of course, we shouldn’t take this update to mean that MoviePass is moving away from its data collection ideas completely. The company famously loses money every time a user sees a movie due to its subscription model, and thus has to rely on other tactics to eventually turn a profit.
The future of MoviePass’ data collection efforts are unclear, though, and the company certainly has a lot of cleaning up to do in terms of its reputation. If you’re still interested in becoming a MoviePass subcriber, you can do so right here.
Do you care about MoviePass’ data tracking plans, or is giving up some privacy worth the cheaper movies? Let us know down the comments!
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