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Why a new funding round for HQ Trivia might make you #DeleteHQ

Players of the popular trivia game took to Twitter over the weekend to express their displeasure for a controversial funding source.

Jason Parker Senior Editor / Reviews - Software
Jason Parker has been at CNET for nearly 15 years. He is the senior editor in charge of iOS software and has become an expert reviewer of the software that runs on each new Apple device. He now spends most of his time covering Apple iOS releases and third-party apps.
Jason Parker
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Vice President-elect Mike Pence looks on as President-elect Donald Trump shakes Peter Thiel's hand during a December 2016 meeting at Trump Tower.

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Many of us remember last year's Twitter campaign to #DeleteUber from your app library, which was largely over Uber's stance on immigration. Well now there's a similar campaign against HQ Trivia after Recode broke a story late last week that a new $15 million round of funding was coming from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund. 

HQ Trivia, a livestreamed game you play on your phone, has been exploding in popularity since its debut last summer. Here's why: You can win real money.

The game kicks off daily at noon PT and again at 6 p.m. PT. You are given 10 seconds to answer each question from the time the host starts reading it. Prize pools average $2,500 and are split by all winners. The highest pool we've seen was Sunday during halftime of the Super Bowl when it reached $20,000.

To give you an idea of its popularity, when we started playing in September, the audience for a game ran in the tens of thousands, but lately, it's not uncommon for a game to have over a million players. The game reached a record of almost 2 million players during the Super Bowl.

With Thiel on board, that may be about to change.

Thiel, a venture capitalist, PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor, was also one of the few tech elite to support then-candidate Donald Trump in his campaign for president. He funded the court case that led to the demise of the beloved Gawker media, and, by some accounts, he believes that the key to everlasting youth might be through blood transfusions with young people.

Given his controversial stances, Twitter had plenty to say over the weekend in response to the Founders Fund funding. Users tweeted via the DeleteHQ hashtag:

We couldn't reach Thiel for comment about the trending hashtag. And HQ Trivia declined comment.

But some think the mass exodus could be good for them:

Other people may have been taking it a little too far:

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