The Saudi startup behind anonymous commenting app Sarahah, banned by Apple and Google over bullying, launches Enoff, a workplace anonymous feedback app for iOS
Context & Ripple Effects
Sarahah was one of the fastest-growing consumer apps of 2017 — 95 million registered users run by just two full-time employees — but its core design, letting messages arrive with no way for recipients to respond, made it a magnet for abuse and ended in bans from both Apple and Google. Enoff is the founder's second attempt at anonymity, this time pointed at workplaces rather than friends.
The pivot follows a playbook the App Store has already rewarded once: After School returned to the App Store only after adding moderation to combat bullying, showing Apple will readmit anonymous apps that constrain what can be said.
First-order effects
- Enoff must clear the same Apple review process that delisted Sarahah, so the workplace framing and feedback structure are effectively compliance features, not just positioning.
- The Saudi-based team shifts from a consumer audience where the US was its biggest market to a professional use case, trading viral reach for a context where anonymity has an accepted business rationale.
Second-order effects
- Apple and Google face a sharpened consistency question: they banned Sarahah over abuse while their stores continue to host other controversial Saudi-linked apps such as Absher, giving critics a ready-made contrast in curation standards.
- Rival anonymous apps now have a template to copy — structured prompts and moderated contexts are what buy survival on the app stores, pressuring free-form anonymous messaging products toward the same design.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, app-store gatekeepers become de facto designers of anonymity: unstructured anonymous messaging gets squeezed out in favor of formats — multiple choice, workplace feedback — that bake in accountability.
- Anonymous social products increasingly survive as niche B2B-style tools rather than mass consumer networks, since professional settings give platforms a defensible reason to host them.
The trend: App-store moderation is forcing anonymous social apps to trade open-ended messaging for structured, context-bound formats as the price of distribution.