support, freelance work, general friendship and much more. In her affidavit evidence, Ms Grover described her vision for the Giggle App:
The vision was to create a little corner of the Internet where women from all over the world could have a refuge away from men. It could be for serious reasons, very superficial reasons, or very practical reasons. It would be a place without harassment, "mansplaining", "dick pics", stalking, and aggression, and other male patterned online behaviour. A place to vent and get advice from other women and find out what was happening in the real world in a female-only environment.
During development, I would often say, "I want to ensure that women can have access to a female support network in the palm of their hand whenever they need it" and that is essentially what we were creating. The vision was an online women's refuge, so to speak. The vision was to have a positive impact on women's daily online and social media experience.
96 The Giggle App could only be used on smartphones, not computers. Ms Grover describes it as effectively a number of apps on one platform. The Giggle App allowed users to directly message each other, and also featured a lesbian dating platform which allowed users to create a profile and then swipe to match with other users before beginning a private conversation. It also included a feature called "Giggle Talk", which Ms Grover describes as a female-only Twitter, which was added to the beta app in 2021. Giggle Talk did not allow non-Giggle App users to view or create posts. Ms Tickle describes there also being a section of small groups which were called "Giggles". Users could join a Giggle to discuss topics of interest, such as cooking, travel or health. While it is not expressly explained what this feature entailed, in context it seems to be some kind of group texting facility, but nothing turns on this additional detail.
97 The Giggle App was free for users, with premium upgrades available for purchase which were described as allowing them to have greater control over their experience on the App. Ms Grover says that upgrades to use premium features cost $2–3 per month, though at some point in 2020 Giggle made those features available to users for free. These included a feature called Giggle Slide, which allowed users to message each other without matching with each other, and a feature called Giggle Invisible which allowed users to use the App anonymously (presumably to each other, and not to the App itself). Ms Grover's affidavit evidence states that the fees payable for premium features were charged "by reason of the software upgrades that were required to produce them" and that Giggle "turned off" payments for those features in 2020 onwards to allow users access to those features.
98 The beta version of the Giggle App was taken live on the Google Play and Apple App stores in February 2020, in order for testing to be undertaken. Its promotional materials described it
