Apple Bans RSS Reader Due To Bad Word In Feed Link

btempleton writes "It all started when I prepared yet another Downfall subtitle parody. In this one, Hitler is the studio head, upset at all the Downfall parodies, and he wants to do DMCA takedowns on them all. (If you're a DMCA/DRM fighting Slashdotter, you'll like it.) The EFF, which I chair, blogged it on Deeplinks, and hilarity ensued. That weekend, Exact Magic, an iPhone developer, had submitted a special RSS reader app to display EFF news on the iPhone. Apple's iPhone app store evaluators looked at the RSS reader, read the feed it pointed to, and then played the linked-to video. They saw the F-word flash in the subtitles of the video, and then rejected the RSS-reading tool from the App Store. We're up to several levels of meta here — Apple has banned an app over a parody about banning, and is now parodying itself. Bonus: TFA also has the story of just how hard it is to be fully legal in obtaining the famous clip for parody."

Comments

Enough already, Apple

[Tokerat]

I'm an Apple fanboy and even I'm sick of this.

If they're not careful, pretty soon the PSP Go App Store is going to be the one making all the money. Hey Sony, PSPhone in the works?

Re:Enough already, Apple

[QuantumG]

Yeah.. it's pretty easy, you default to "Adults Only" mode, but you provide a "Clean Feed" mode which people can opt-in to. All your effort goes into bringing the "Clean Feed" up to date and, as such, even the kids won't want to use it, so one day you take a look at the numbers and say "why are we putting so much effort into this 1% of the market?" and get rid of it.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[0100010001010011]

How the fuck difficult is it to realize what an RSS reader does and to realize the app doesn't 'do' that content, it just gets it from the feed?

Does Apple have 5th graders reviewing this content?

Description: "This app downloads and displays pictures." It would be reasonable to assume that those pictures could be pornography. However that's not what the program does. Holy hell.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[i.of.the.storm]

Hell, by those standards they should block Safari, since it's much more likely and easier to access inappropriate content with. This is getting pretty ridiculous.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[Jurily]

How the fuck difficult is it to realize what an RSS reader does and to realize the app doesn't 'do' that content, it just gets it from the feed?

In fact, what's up with all that parental content bullshit? Is it going to scar children for life if they see a bad word? It's not like they don't hear enough in the television, their browser, their teacher ferchrissake.

Not to mention every other kid they come in contact with. Should we ban those too? Just lock them in a box or something.

Those are the heavy seven. Those are the ones that'll infect your soul,
curve your spine, and keep the country from winning the war.
"Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits"

Re:Enough already, Apple

[Z00L00K]

Censorship is more indecent than any use of profanity ever can be.

Someone has to make a reality check.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[teh kurisu]

But you can block Safari, if you're a parent and you want control over what your child does with their iPhone. It's under Settings > General > Restrictions.

What you can't do, however, is allow/block each and every application that your child might download from the App Store. You can block the installation of applications altogether, but it's rather obvious that Apple doesn't want you to do that - it cuts off a potential revenue stream for them.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[Serious Callers Only]

Should parents not have the choice as to whether to allow their kids to be exposed to bad language, or are you advocating removing that responsibility from the parents?

Parents may believe they have that choice, and in certain domains (e.g. the dinner table) they do. However children are great at finding stuff they aren't allowed to access, and the internet is full of things they shouldn't see, but they will, whether you want them to or not.

As with their exposure to the rest of the outside world, the best thing you can do is to guide them, and indicate what is acceptable, and what is not. Personally I wouldn't let my kids just go and purchase apps on the store themselves till they were old enough to be responsible about it, but that's just me. By the time you allow them to purchase apps with your credit card I think you really have to let go of controlling their decisions.

Quite apart from the futility of parental controls, Apple don't even have parental controls in place for apps - if they did, this sort of thing would not be an issue, as they'd allow some parents to attempt to control what their children can see, and everyone else would ignore them. As it is, they're trying to ban apps for allowing access to the internet or literature. This isn't hard-core porn or something, it's simply swear-words.

By those standards, this page would be adult-only, most sites which young people frequent would be adult-only, in fact most of the internet would be adult-only.

The approvals process is a joke, which in turn makes Apple look like a joke. Really this sort of nonsense should at least wait till they have some 'Adult' rating systems in place, and then they can mark most of the internet as indecent, or adult, or evil, or whatever they want to call them, and any app that access the internet as the same.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[growse]

It's made by Apple. Of course Apple would rather decide for you what you want on your phone. It's all about the *experience* remember?

Re:Enough already, Apple

[Stuart Gibson]

Parental controls/ratings are in iPhone OS 3.0

Re:Enough already, Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Or an Apple employee. WOOOSH!

Re:Enough already, Apple

[PopeRatzo]

What you can't do, however, is allow/block each and every application that your child might download from the App Store.

Actually, I'd rather see parents have the ability to block apps than Apple, which ends up blocking them for all of us.

The bigger question should be: "Why would you buy a child an iPhone?" Don't they have special phones for parents who don't trust or spend any time with their children?

Re:Enough already, Apple

[PopeRatzo]

Should parents not have the choice as to whether to allow their kids to be exposed to bad language

They already have the choice of whether to buy their kids an iPhone.

I think Fisher-Price makes a colorful little phone that only lets kids phone home.

Apple does us no favors.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[loutr]

So a parent could load up the iPhone with games and tools the kid might need then restrict it.

So, problem solved. Apple needs to get out of the iPhone app approving business.

Too complicated. It's easier sitting on your ass while the web/iphone/Xbox babysits your children and then loudly complaining when they see something you didn't want them to.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[smitty97]

You are using a privately owned store...

not if you're shopping for a car in the US these days...

Re:Enough already, Apple

[Resident Emil]

He's apparently thinking different.

Re:Enough already, Apple

[geminidomino]

The cheapest iPod Touch is $229, or $179 refurbished.

Besides, it's up to the parent to decide what to buy their child, what they should be allowed to do, and what kind of environment they should be brought up in.

You mean it's NOT up to apple?

Shock of shocks...

Re:Enough already, Apple

[mdwh2]

And as for 'special' phones where internet access is restricted or prohibitively expensive, try just about every non-'smartphone' on the market.

In the US maybe. Elsewhere such as here in the UK, bog standard phones have had unrestricted Internet access for years. And at the same choice of rates as "smart" phones. To be honest, the "smart" distinction doesn't really apply anymore (except perhaps for Iphone shills, who want to hand pick an arbitrary market to greatly inflate Apple's market share).

Re:Enough already, Apple

[that IT girl]

Erm... If you're upset at the way Apple is treating their customers, I don't think running to Sony is running in the right direction.

Speaking as an Apple fanboi ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

... I can think of two possibilities here.

1. Someone high up in the App Store hierarchy is completely batshit insane. They're a fundie wacko, or they're deathly afraid of the Think Of The Chiiildren wackos, or something like that. I really just can't believe that the orders to ban anything that can get dirty words from anywhere on the internet came down from upper management; they can't be that ignorant. So it's someone on a personal crusade who has just enough pull to make it work.

2. Apple basically wants to own every internet-enabled app on the iPhone, and they're using these dumb excuses to get rid of any competition. Sooner or later, they think, everything you do on the iPhone that isn't strictly local will go through an app bearing the Apple logo.

Either way, it's a dumb move. I'm one of those irritating smug Mac users everyone loves to whine about. The last five computers I've bought have been Macs, and the next five probably will be as well. Whenever anyone asks me about what to do with their malware-ridden PCs, I say, "get a Mac." And I was seriously considering getting an iPhone to go with my iPod and iEverythingElse ... but I'm not going to even think about it until Apple fixes whatever the hell is going on with the App Store. I really doubt I'm the only one.

Re:Speaking as an Apple fanboi ...

[Mr2001]

Speaking as an Apple critic, I think there's a possibility you missed:

3. Apple's system of approving apps has no objective guidelines, no oversight, and no accountability; the result is total fucking chaos. Individual testers are allowed to make decisions based on "offensiveness" criteria they make up themselves, and this particular app happened to be tested by an uptight moron who went to great lengths to find some reason to ban it.

Based on the stories I've heard about rejected apps being approved simply by resubmitting them, this might even be true. If so, Apple needs to fire a bunch of people, and then write a real set of guidelines so everyone inside and outside the company is on the same page.

Re:Speaking as an Apple fanboi ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

This is happening often enough, and in a similar enough way each time, that it seems likely to me that someone's doing it as a matter of policy. If it's just individual actions on the part of low-level employees, I'd expect those people to be discovered and fired fairly quickly.

Re:Speaking as an Apple fanboi ...

[beelsebob]

4. They have an automated script that launches the app, greps the text on screen for naughty words, checks it doesn't crash/access things it shouldn't/leak memory etc. and rejects apps before a human even looks at them.

I wonder if this is the right answer?

Re:Speaking as an Apple fanboi ...

[emlyncorrin]

But in this case, the "naughty words" are embedded into a video. So it's not just scanning the text, it would have to do OCR on each frame of the video too.

Re:Speaking as an Apple fanboi ...

[selfevident]

5. The App Store is primarily a fence, not a farm. Its purpose is to make the iPhone safe as a mass market device. So long as there are _enough_ apps to keep iPhone users giggly with delight as they finger their toy -- and there are plenty -- Apple will choose to err on the side of over-censoring. Better to block an app that might offend than make the iPhone seem threatening or risque.

This totalitarianism has been so successful for Apple that we should expect it to grow upwards as Apple introduces its next round of mass-market "computers," such as the rumored iPad.

Re:Speaking as an Apple fanboi ...

[sootman]

5) John Gruber supplies #5

This is why

[EsbenMoseHansen]

.. I am actually happy that Microsoft dominates the market over Apple. Microsoft is bad enough, but Apple is a control-freak of a company :/

Of course, when the year of linux-on-the-desktop-comes, it will all be better. Right?

Re:This is why

[Kaitnieks]

I think they're both control-freaks. The difference is that stuff released by Microsoft is pretty open at first. Later they realize - oops, we should have implemented some kind of control mechanism. They try to add DRMs, genuine validations and loads of other shit with poor resluts. It's different with Apple because the first thing they write is the control, be it hardware or software, and only then they build a product around it.

Re:This is why

[Snarf You]

poor resluts

There's a joke in here somewhere... but I'm far too sober to find it.

Modus operandi

[ianare]

Apple tries to suppress something it doesn't like, in a way sure to show everyone what a bunch of pricks they are, and yet no one will do a thing about it. News at 11.

Apple == Nazis

[delirium of disorder]

Fuck apple!

Re:Apple == Nazis

[ianare]

I tried on red delicious, but all I accomplished was hurting my penis. Should I try drilling a hole in it first ?

Re:Apple == Nazis

[fractoid]

Cook the apple first, preferably in a delicious pastry crust. Isn't that the American way? :P

Hypocritical Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't iTunes sell songs that have cuss words in them?

Seems a little hypocritical. Apple will sell songs with cuss words for money, but won't let free apps with cuss words be put on their app store? (I am assuming the RSS feed app was free)

note: I am not an iPhone user, I don't know how all that works, just guessing here

Re:Hypocritical Apple?

[Stuart Gibson]

iTunes music store has explicit warnings for naughty words and parents can block access to those.

The App store doesn't yet have them for anything but games (age ratings are coming for all apps in 3.0) so they are assuming all ages have access to all content. A number of apps have been rejected with the advisory that they are resubmitted when 3.0 is live as they can then be flagged as R rated or similar.

Re:Bad words?

[QuantumG]

There's slightly more to it than that:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BcdY_wSklo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyNmGHpL11Q

It's feeling like a trap

[Toonol]

I managed to avoid the whole Apple experience; never bought an iPod, never bought a song from iTunes, never had any desire to get an iPhone. I'm feeling a bit relieved. The whole thing feels like a trap. If I had a thousand bucks tied up in all this interconnected web of apps, platforms, and media, with it's seemingly ever-constricting chains, I'd be pretty irritated.

Lesson I've learned? Always buy IP-violating, unregulated, cheap Chinese knockoffs.

Re:It's feeling like a trap

[X0563511]

You know what else makes a good media manager?

A filesystem.

You know, a system that manages files? Like media files?

Re:It's feeling like a trap

[Bake]

Really? You have a file system that allows me to group together songs that I have previously rated at 4 stars and I haven't listened to for 3-4 weeks and have it order them by the year their respective album was released? Wow.

Re:It's feeling like a trap

[Dhalka226]

I even have these things called "moods" that you might not be familiar with.

Apparently right now it's "snarky bitch." I'm sure a good recommendation algorithm could find you some appropriate songs to listen to.

Re:It's feeling like a trap

[Civil_Disobedient]

how can I make my playlists so I only see my Dance music albums and I'd like my Jazz playlists to only show those by Monk and Coltrane and ignore the rest

Oh, that's easy. First thing you do is learn how to make playlists, genius.

Oh..where do I press to sync my music player with all these files?

COPY. PASTE. Let me know if I'm going too fast for you.

I also can;t see how to subscribe to my podcasts, where do I do that on this filesysyetm you talk of?

It's right next to the button where it wipes your ass for you.

Re:Subtle

[compro01]

No, it's subtitle advertising.

Re:Bad words?

[Toonol]

Who cares if someone says/hears a swear word, really? It surely doesn't hurt anyone, unless they've been trained to be offended by them.

Well, a lot of people HAVE been trained to be offended by them.

It's time to realize that swearing is only "bad" due to religious baggage, nothing else.

True, although I'd say it's cultural baggage that was influenced by religion. The crucial point is that swearing is also only "good" due to that baggage. If nobody cared about a particular swear word, it would soon fall out of favor for something that would be more offensive.

In other words, if there was no taboo against saying 'fuck', there would be no reason for Hitler to be saying 'fuck' in the first place. (Except maybe to his dear wife.)

Re:Bad words?

[Fred_A]

In other words, if there was no taboo against saying 'fuck', there would be no reason for Hitler to be saying 'fuck' in the first place. (Except maybe to his dear wife.)

Would a pissed-off Hitler saying
"My dear Himmler, I am thoroughly bothered by those irksome developments on the eastern front"
sound better to you than
"Fuck those damn Russians" ?

Re:Bad words?

[GospelHead821]

You say, "it would soon fall out of favor for something that would be more offensive." That's technically true, but I think that looking at the way it would happen is revealing. The new word, Belgium, for example, wouldn't be intrinsically offensive. Some words were created offensive because somebody wanted a word that was "filthy." Consider fornication versus fucking or feces versus shit.

Some other words are offensive because of religious objections, but in fairness, the ideas behind the words wouldn't exist if it weren't for religion. Consider, for example, "God damn it." You hear it often enough that you don't think about it, but it's a curse. The speaker is asking God to condemn the object of his wrath. It's become rather commonplace and nobody really thinks about that meaning anymore, but consider how offended you'd be if somebody said it and actually meant it. That's some pretty bitter hatred!

I have an idea to avoid this kind of fiasco

[Planar]

Publish all your contents under a license that says "you are not allowed to read/view/listen to this for purposes of reviewing or censorship", then sue their ass off when they do censor it. That would put the DMCA to good use, for once.

And here we go again.

[91degrees]

loop_point:
Apple rejects an app for stupid reasons.
This will spread across the web.
Apple will looks bad.
Apple will "reconsider" and accept the app.
Lots of people will completely miss the point and think it's all okay.
Apple will then reject another app for stupid reasons.
goto loop_point;

In other news, Apple i-sunglasses

[Kupfernigk]

Apple introduces special i-sunglasses that go completely opaque when near a beach, in case there are any topless women around (not sold in Europe).

Re:In other news, Apple i-sunglasses

[SharpFang]

because, unlike in the US, the sight of European topless girls doesn't cause anguish, disgust and general trauma.

Don't ridicule the Führer ...

[meist3r]

Or Steve Jobs will lose his temper ... turtle necks are the new uniforms. Apples the new swastikas ... want proof: http://www.apfelfront.de/propaganda.html

Fucking Morons

[Master of Transhuman]

And every one of those fucking idiots uses the word fuck on a fucking hourly basis and the hypocritical fucks can't stand to see the word fuck in a fucking RSS feed?

FUCK 'EM IF THEY CAN'T TAKE A FUCKING JOKE!

What a terrible business model

[FranTaylor]

Apple is pushing this as a way for companies to invest in some software effort and gain some practical results, but how can you expect a company to commit resources to developing an iPhone app if it can be denied for such petty and silly reasons? The best-laid plans of an entire corporation can be wrecked by the petty actions of someone outside of their control? Really not a sound business strategy. Why not just develop for the Google phone where you don't need permission or clearance from anyone?

Diary of an App Store Reviewer

[DynamiteNeon]

I think this is appropriate.

http://daringfireball.net/2009/05/diary_of_an_app_store_reviewer

Apple run by the CCP?

[Fuzi719]

Apple is becoming like the CCP (that's the Chinese PRC gov't for the great uneducated), with the App Store like the Great Firewall. Both seem to be run rather arbitrarily and reactionary. While Apple has some nice hardware and software, their practices and the drooling fanboys completely turn me cold. I'd rather buy something, anything, else even if it has less functionality overall.

Apple helping retards

[Snaller]

Come now, lets all be fair, it is commendable that Apple are hiring mentally diseased retarded people! They need jobs too!