In a sign of the political mood in Taiwan, the top free application in Apple’s App Store there for much of last week wasn’t a mobile game or a social network, but a tool of protest.

Named Bingdela — after a Taiwanese phrase associated with overturning a table in rage — the software allows users to check whether food or drink products are associated with Ting Hsin International, a conglomerate that last year was the center of a food safety scandal involving its cooking oil.

Though the app first appeared last year, downloads spiked during the past week after a court in Taiwan ruled that the chairman of Ting Hsin was not guilty of a charge accusing him of violating Taiwan’s food safety law — even though his company knowingly imported products intended for animal feed and used them to make low-quality oil. The app’s creator, Sky Lin, said it had gotten the bulk of its 260,000 downloads during the past two weeks.

“People couldn’t find a place to vent their anger, and that’s where our product came in to play a role,” said Mr. Lin, who added that he originally made the app not for profit or self-promotion, but instead out of raw political anger.

The power of social media as an implement of political expression is well known. But Mr. Lin’s product shows how apps can be specifically designed to solve more complicated problems of protests. In this case, widespread calls for boycotts of Ting Hsin’s products proved difficult because the conglomerate has several subsidiaries and sells its oil to other companies for use in their products.

The ability to tackle more complex problems gives people the ability to do more in situations where regulators or governments do not do their jobs effectively, according to Mr. Lin.

“There are structural issues creating these types of food safety problems in Taiwan. It’s a deeper issue with Taiwanese law and government. It’s not an isolated case. We have seen it happen again and again,” he said.

Mr. Lin said he expected more of this type of protest to come to the fore in Taiwan as activists gain stronger programming abilities. He and his team, who normally work on an app that is a guide to Taiwan’s bars, were able to create the protest app in just two weeks, mostly by reusing code they had already developed.

The most labor-intensive part, according to Mr. Lin, was researching the products linked to Ting Hsin and photographing them to assemble a graphical database of items that should be flagged. Friends pitched in to provide other photos and research.

With the app now doing well, a new question facing Mr. Lin is whether to fund it.

“The second day after it happened, I was contacted by an advertising agent, and they argued that we’ll need advertising if we want long-term development. But for me personally, I don’t want to see ads when using this app,” he said.

Offers for sponsorships have also come in, but Mr. Lin said those, too, were problematic, because large sums from different organizations or companies could ultimately compromise the fairness of the app down the line.

Mr. Lin is still trying to figure out what to do with Bingdela. Some have suggested that his team should add other brands that have had past issues, but he said that for now he was still trying to figure out how to round up funding.

“We have received a lot of encouragement, some of which actually were quite touching. It gave me the motivation to do more. My wife said, ‘That’s not your expertise.’ I think Taiwan needs such a platform to do this, whether it be the government or a nongovernment entity. We need this to fundamentally fix some damages caused by economic development,” he said.