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Apple Bans Game App That Criticizes Smartphone Production
An anonymous reader sends word that Apple has removed from the App Store a game called Phone Story, which walks players through the creation of a smartphone, highlighting many of the negative aspects. There are four brief stages: running a mining facility in the Congo, saving suicidal factory workers, handing out phones to oblivious consumers, and generating e-waste through planned obsolescence. Apple said Phone Story violated sections 15.2, 16.1, 21.1, and 21.2 of the App Store guidelines, which make reference to "objectionable or crude content" and "offensive or mean-spirited commentary." A short video of the game has been posted at Kotaku.
Allowing the application will reflect negatively on Apple just as much as censoring it (and not for reasons having to do with whether the criticism has substance). I can just imagine the headlines: "Apple is so dumb they will sell you the rope you can hang them with".
I've always jokingly called apple the "Cult of Macintology", but now it's even more obvious. The cult of $cientology sue people when they don't like what they're saying, Apple also take action (by the sole means they can) by killing off criticism.
Can anyone say Streisand effect?
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Simple Rules in business:
Don't tell Big Tobacco that smoking kills.
Don't tell Big Fast Food that their food is unhealthy.
Don't tell Big Pharma that they peddle snake oil pills driven to consumers by fear they (Big Pharma) create.
Apparently we can now add:
Don't tell Big Communications that their industry has any sort of faults or makes a buck off the backs of kids in poor-shit-hole-third-world countries.
Also in the agreement: 16.1 Apps that present excessively objectionable or crude content will be rejected
When Apple says "Questionable" they don't mean "questionable to the general public" - they mean "questionable to an Apple executive".
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
But you forget that android's marketplace is NOT the only legal way to buy and sell apps. even if google rejects the game, the developers can still just send a link to download the game (you know, like normal software) or publish it at amazon's appstore. If you are rejected by apple you're only way to share the game is to jailbroken devices. That's why ios is a walled garden, and android is not. (I am talking about the censorship part. slave labor and outsourcing is done by everyone)