![]() "The company is nowhere to be found when it comes to freedom of expression, they're just absent." Apple declined to tell the newspaper what local regulations its app violated and how it was contacted by Chinese authorities. On more than one occasion, the tech giant has removed apps from the App Store to cater to the wishes of foreign governments, namely Russia and China.Įarlier this year, it complied with a request from Chinese governmental authorities to remove the New York Times app from the country's version of the App Store. Apple tailors the App Store to meet not just its own tastes, however. ![]() When it chooses to reject fart apps or those that feature a specific meme frog, it imposes its own standard of decency upon its users. When Apple rejects an app like Metadata for example, it prevents Americans from learning about their government's covert military efforts abroad, which routinely kill more civilians than it wants to admit. Apple has createdĪ privately owned walled garden that affects how the more than 700 million iPhone users worldwide interact with their phones and consume information online. The App Store approval process can be an irritation for developers, but it's more problematic for consumers, who often don't know what kind of content they're missing. ![]() "I've worked for a company doing iOS development and it was always such a pain when it came time to submit or update an app for the Apple App Store." I mean they do review apps, but certainly not to the same standard Apple does," Jonathan Robbins, an Android developer who made a Pepe game for Android but not iOS, told Motherboard in an email. "Google will sometimes publish your app almost instantaneously. The uncertainty of getting an app approved keeps some developers away from Apple entirely. The episode showed that Apple was capable of having changes of heart, which can greatly impact the bottom line of developers reliant on the App Store. By the end of 2008, it was sometimes raking in $10,000 a day. When Apple reversed the fart app ban, Comm's app, which made a variety of humorous noises, soared to the top of the App Store's charts. IFart would eventually make Comm and his colleagues rich. Apple did not return two requests for comment. "After five years and more than a dozen App Store rejections, I can confidently say I have no idea what's going on over there," Josh Begley, a data scientist and editor at The Intercept whose drone strike news app has been repeatedly rejected, told me in an email. When it's invoked, it can leave developers clueless. It's been used as a catchall to reject everything from fart apps to one that monitors drone strikes. The rule, outlined in Apple's App Store Review Guidelines, has both specific and vague instructions: For example, it bans porn and racism, but also "mean-spirited" content. While most developers never run into problems with the App Store, there are plenty who have spent years honing and perfecting their apps, only to be turned away from the App Store for mysterious reasons, often under Apple's infamous rule banning "objectionable content." ![]() Last year, App Store developers raked in $20 billion, so it makes economic sense for them to them to continue to focus the bulk of their energy on iOS. But Apple's software marketplace is one of the biggest digital economies ever created. To this day, developers say the Google Play store is much less restrictive than the App Store. In 2010, Steve Jobs famously told a customer in an email that he believes Apple has "a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone," and that those looking for explicit content should "buy an Android." It's not just porn, of course-Apple has rejected apps that are politically problematic, contain malware, put Apple in a bad light, or are just plain juvenile. ![]()
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