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So what does it do? Is it just about the daily ping?

I assume they use it to track DAUs/MAUs. Otherwise, they only have data on installs, but wouldn't have visibility into user retention.

Yes, most likely. Being VC backed means they will want to be able to show pretty growth charts every few months.

Seems like they could've avoided this entirely just by having a daily check for updates to the app itself and accepting the fuzz factor.