Should You Use the Meitu Photo-Editing App to Anime Yourself?
The App Store is full of selfie apps, but perhaps none are as interesting or as polarizing as the Meitu photo-editing app. First released eight years ago, the free Chinese photo-editing app has been in the news this week over privacy concerns and more.
What it does
Meitu’s primary tool is to turn your selfies into unique works of art. It does so by providing various templates, which with an interesting name. These include “blossoms,” “angelic,” and “mermaid.” Like with other photo-editing apps, you can share Meitu selfies to social networks and through messaging.
Like other photo-editing apps, Meitu allows you to share your images on social networks and through messaging.
The issue
Recode notes, Meitu “seeks excessive permissions, including access to your phone’s GPS and other data.” In turn, “security researchers are concerned about what Meitu intends to do with all the data it is collecting, since clearly they don’t need location data to make your face all sparkly.”
Take a look at the entire list of permissions from the the Meitu app. pic.twitter.com/AkSw2Z50T7
— FourOctets (@FourOctets) January 19, 2017
The app is also heavily criticized for making “people of all skin tones much whiter.”
Of note: the Meitu app removes nearly all traces of melanin from ones skin.
— EricaJoy (@EricaJoy) January 19, 2017
In recent days, Meitu has gained a lot of new users. Why? Recode isn’t sure:
But it wasn’t on the radar here until the past few days, and it’s not super clear why that changed. Before this week, Meitu was getting just a few hundred iOS downloads in the U.S. per day, according to Mobile Action. That has jumped to 100,000 per day in the last couple of days.
The Meitu photo-editing app is strange and creepy with recently uncovered privacy concerns. You’ll need to decide for yourself whether it’s worth the risk. Check out my Meitu selfie:
Even with the privacy concerns, will you download Meitu? Let us know using the comments below.
