a glitchy edited screenshot of americasbestpics.com

the ifunny clone that isnt

god i love fucked up corporate structures

this blog post was originally a tumblr post, inline links are sources

so today the following post appeared on my tumblr dash, reminding me of a bit of research i did a while ago.

https://www.tumblr.com/tchaikovskaya/714797621937618944

as you can see there is a tiny tiny banner at the bottom of the second posts image. when i first encountered this footer a while ago i got curious, what the fuck is americasbestpics.com? so i checked it out

a screenshot of the americasbestpics home page, it's a meme website with a feed and various tags you can explore

it pretty much just looks like an ifunny clone, huh? specifically advertising to americans? looks interesting, i dug deeper, trying to figure out where their backend is, and how the fuck they have as many posts as they do if i've never heard of them

screenshot of a developer tools view of the americasbestpics front page, there are various scripts being loaded from an ifunny domain

wait, huh? what's that? what? ifunny?

the play store listing for americas best pics showing it is listed by Funtech Publishing LTD

oh, so ABPV is run by Funtech Publishing, a company that runs a number of hyperspecific ifunny "clones". wait? funtech is the word funcorp (owner of ifunny) uses to describe their industry? huh?

digs a bit deeper

hm funtech publishing is headquartered in the same city in cyprus as funcorp! hmmmmmmm

screenshot of company registrations showing Irina Antipina is both a company officer for funtech as well as ifunny

oh huh, wow how curious! the main company officer registered for funtech publishing also just so happens to be the former ceo/director at ifunny (at the time of them being main officer at funtech), that surely doesn't mean anything

ok so, wait, ifunny runs an ifunny clone, a shady meme/tiktok clone app where you ?? get paid ?? to use the app? (which curiously enough is listed under a different company name and corporate structure, while also being on the funtech website?), a whatsapp status saver letting u save other peoples statuses, some other rly cringily advertised meme focused tiktok clone and potentially some other apps.

this is not an uncommon practice for smaller advertising business focused mobile app dev studios, but i was really surprised to find ifunny doing this, and especially that they would compete with themselves.