Weblog post 9/27 Smart phone app Phone Story

Phone Story is an application available on smart phones that satirically shows the horrors of the process necessary to extract the mineral Coltan, which is used in almost all phones today. The app’s purpose is not  to actually be played. Its purpose is to raise money for the people affected by the horrid process of Coltan extraction and to raise awareness of this social justice issue. The app has four games aimed at educating the users by taking them through the process of extracting Coltan. The four games are; extraction in Congo, assembly in massive Chinese factories, the United States obsession with consumerism, and E-waste in Pakistan. The developers of this app, Molleindustria, receive 70% of the money paid to acquire this app. With that 70% they donate all of it to worker’s organizations and non-profit charities who are fighting company abuse. An example of one these companies is Foxconn. An example of the philanthropy of Molleindustria is they donated $6,000 to a Chinese worker for Foxconn for serious injuries received from a suicide attempt. The worker, Tian Yu, attempted to take her own life by jumping off the roof of the Foxconn factory in 2010. Phone Story was taken off the Apple app store only three hours after its launch due to the negative press caused by this app. However Phone Story is still available on the Android app market for $1.00, a small fee for a good cause.

Link to website: http://www.phonestory.org/#about