App Rejections

In typical Apple fashion, it’s major but (apparently) silent: large numbers of apps are being pulled from the App Store (see below for linked examples – some of these are safe for viewing by teens and pre-teens under standard Parental Guidance rules). A couple of examples (1, 2) suggest this form letter:

Dear [developer],
The App Store continues to evolve, and as such, we are constantly refining our guidelines. Your application, [app name], contains content that we had originally believed to be suitable for distribution. However, we have recently received numerous complaints from our customers about this type of content, and have changed our guidelines appropriately.
We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application.
Thank you for your understanding in this matter. If you believe you can make the necessary changes so that [app name] complies with our recent changes, we encourage you to do so and resubmit for review.
Sincerely,
iPhone App Review

Affected developers are – no surprise – angry. Not so much for Apple’s anti-sex stance (although for all those of us who live in normal countries where we actually have sex … i.e. not the USA … the anti-sex stance is the subject of much ridicule), but for the way Apple has seemingly set them up and then betrayed them.

Expectation Management in a World Without Rules

The key issue is that Apple still *refuses* to tell anyone what the rules are for the App store. So … everyone has to “infer” and “imply” from Apple’s overt actions.

(of course, that’s the whole reason behind this website, App Rejections – to document those actions and help developers second-guess Apple’s policies)

Apple originally Rejected all adult-themed apps, and anything that remotely implied sex or sexual activity. Early last year, they introduced an age-rating system, and soon stated allowing those apps that had been previously rejected. There are some major flaws with the age-rating system – Apple has frequently rejected any app that includes embedded weblinks unless the authors rate it as “Age 17+” – but on the whole it seems to have reduced the volume of unreasonable rejections.

Now, with the App Store full of apps with titles containing “Boobs”, “Sex”, “Bikini”, etc – most of which are just photos no stronger than those you’d see in any lingerie catalogue – Apple unilaterally decides to ban all such apps.

The Wobble iBoobs app is particularly interesting: this app contains zero sexual content. It is an app that allows you to convert photos you already possess to have stronger sexual content – but only if they’re already sexual (try sticking fake boobs on a photo of a brick wall; not sexy).

But even this has fallen foul of the mass ban:

it’s not like Wobble isn’t *known* to Apple – they have paid us almost $300,000 more in AUD and it’s been installed 970,000 times (inc the free version)!!
…
average rating by users of 4 star [the vast majority of the ratings are 5 star]

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spammedy Spam

Reports from developers suggest that Apple forgot to tell their PR department what they did:

“Whenever we receive customer complaints about objectionable content we review them. If we find apps that contain inappropriate material we remove them from the App Store and request the developer to make any necessary changes to their apps in order to be distributed by Apple.”

If that’s a genuine strategy, it’s pathetic (clearly, it’s not – this is just a default-PR statement, while they wait to be told by the rest of the company what just happened). As a platform-owner, *you* make the decisions, and Apple has shown thousands of times already that it’s more than happy to make those decisions arbitarily, without reference to any public process.

No … I suspect this is more to do with the vast number of crummy “bikini” and “swimsuit girls” apps that have appeared on the App store over the past few months. It’s had that feeling of deja-vu, back when there was a rash of “flashlight” apps (and, later, “farting” apps trying to cash-in).

The spam is a real problem: Apple has no public process for vetting submissions, nad has repeatedly shown themselves inadequate to the task of balancing between quality and freedom … and so has no credibility when they try to maintain a standard. I suspect the current wave of bans is a knee-jerk reaction to try and correct what they consider were their own mistakes over recent months.

Followups

Techcrunch was alerted, and then ran a followup playing the “Censorship!” (Um … wake up, TechCrunch! You’re a bit slow if you’re crying foul over censorship only *now*). That should bring a lot more attention to the topic, which is good.

I also spotted an InformationWeek article, that had a lot more detail, including some interesting quotes from developers and customer complaints (incidentally – all the links to Apple websites in the IW article are now dead … has Apple pulled them in response to the article? Ouch).