Why Apple Should Stop Censoring Apps

An anonymous reader writes "ReadWriteWeb makes the case that Apple should stop censoring submissions to the App Store. The company made headlines last week for banning an app showing the locations of drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. The article says Apple should restrict its bans to apps that have terrible functionality or a poor UI, and 'get out of the business of censorship.' Quoting: 'Last year in Syria, antigovernment activists began using an iPhone app to disseminate news, maps, photos and videos about the conflict in a country that doesn't exactly rank highly for its press freedom. Mobile tech in the hands of Syrian dissidents proved enough of a nuisance that the government banned the iPhone in late 2011, presumably to quash content that the regime found, um, objectionable. This example raises a few questions. First, why are pins on a map more objectionable than photos and video clips from a war zone? Why does content that effectively agitates for one government to be overthrown make the cut, while content that may make another government look bad (depending on one's own perspective) doesn't? Is Apple taking sides in international conflicts? Perhaps more disturbing is the notion that, were Apple to apply these standards consistently, apps like the one used by Syrian dissidents — and perhaps some news apps — would be barred from the App Store as well.'"

Comments

No.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Is Apple taking sides in international conflicts?

Um, no. Apple is taking sides based on the PR it might get. They banned the 'shake the baby' app for exactly the same reason. They're not going to stop doing it, either, because 'image' is a big part of their marketing strategy.

Re:No.

[Sarten-X]

Exactly.

Apple isn't trying to fight for any particular ideals of freedom. They're fighting to fill a walled garden that people will pay money to use. Things that offend the American right-wing militants will get banned. Things that offend the American left-wing socialists will get banned. Things that piss off people with "complex standards" will get banned. Things that piss off people with "common sense" will get banned.

All that is left is apps that appeal to the middle-of-the-road masses, because that's where Apple's money comes from.

Re:No.

[Beardo the Bearded]

Not just image, but even an easy distro like Ubuntu requires command-line tweaking to get it to work properly.

The problem is, and XKCD nailed this, was that the OS doesn't matter. Everyone's using the Interwebs for Facebook, LOLCats, YouTube, and porn. So you want the computer that'll deliver the goods with the least amount of fucking around.

The cheap solution is Windows. That's the default OS on most computers sold. Reboots are acceptable for 99% of users.

The heavily-marketed "just works" solution is Apple's walled garden. Most people don't care about the open or closed nature, "wait, I can get the stuff on the list and it won't break if I've installed an new program? Yeah, I can afford the Mac Tax, gimmie." I know, it only works on their special parts, and nothing else. Their users don't care about DRM, or the shift of computers from creative to consumptive devices.

Any flavour of Linux requires a lot of tinkering. That's great if the tinkering is part of your hobby, or if you want to actually own your machine. (I've had the touchpad break when installing SMPlayer, FFS.) Linux is a pain in the ass to use, end of story. Once it's working, it's great, but to get it to that point requires a massive amount of patience.

Re:No.

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Agreed wholeheartedly! I run nothing but vanilla Debian (testing on my workstations, stable on my servers) but am the exact opposite of a Linux evangelical. Tweaking the OS is part of my hobby and I get a happy glowing feeling when my computers act like well-oiled machines. I also acknowledge that I represent about .1% of actual users and that most people just want it to work. Would a gear head ever buy a brand new car with an automatic transmission and the hood welded shut?

Re:No.

[tooyoung]

How is this different from other stores? My local grocery chain doesn't stock Playboy in the magazine section. McDonalds doesn't offer Pepsi products. Target doesn't sell Walmart generics. Barnes and Noble doesn't carry my novel. It seems pretty common for stores to limit products that they sell based on all sorts of criteria. I assume you have the same disdain for their censorship and mourn the spiral to mediocrity they create.

Re:No.

[grcumb]

How is this different from other stores? My local grocery chain doesn't stock Playboy in the magazine section. McDonalds doesn't offer Pepsi products. Target doesn't sell Walmart generics. Barnes and Noble doesn't carry my novel. It seems pretty common for stores to limit products that they sell based on all sorts of criteria. I assume you have the same disdain for their censorship and mourn the spiral to mediocrity they create.

The fact that other businesses exercise arbitrary logic does nothing to change the validity (or lack thereof) of the writer's contention that Apple is censoring based on a particular ideological stance. You've just indulged in an appeal to popularity (i.e. 'everybody does X, so it's not wrong' - which doesn't sound so great when you apply different values to X, like slavery, rape or drunk driving).

Now, to look at each of the examples: Exclusivity doesn't seem to be driving Apple's thinking here, so McDonalds doesn't apply. Space is not an issue, so (brick and mortar) Barnes and Noble isn't pertinent. Sales numbers are not the criterion in question here, so B&N online doesn't apply either.

That leaves us with the Playboy example. But the problem is that Soldier of Fortune would be a closer analogy, and to abuse it a little further, the problem is that Apple does stock Soldier of Fortune, but does not stock the Human Rights Watch publication that publishes nothing but the places where violence occurs.

The disdain for Apple's behaviour therefore, isn't just that it's censorious (though it is), nor that it's inconsistent (though it is). The complaint seems to arise from the perception that Apple's behaviour is being driven by a particular ideology that simply refuses to acknowledge anything that might reflect poorly on the US government and its foreign policy.

Draw what conclusions you like about that, but don't do so based entirely on false equivalency.

Re:No.

[R3d M3rcury]

My local grocery chain doesn't stock Playboy in the magazine section. McDonalds doesn't offer Pepsi products. Target doesn't sell Walmart generics. Barnes and Noble doesn't carry my novel.

There's a few differences.

First, in the physical world, shelf-space is limited. A store can't carry everything because there isn't room. Thus, Barnes and Noble doesn't carry your novel because they'd rather stock their shelves with something they believe will sell. Needless to say, this isn't a factor in the digital world.

Second, companies will often make "exclusive" deals. McDonalds doesn't offer Pepsi products because Coke offered them a better deal in return for not carrying Pepsi products. Other political factors also are involved--remember back when Pepsi owned Burger King and Pizza Hut? All the Burger King and Pizza Hut restaurants carried only Pepsi products because that's what the owners wanted. This isn't the case with Apple's Store, either. There are no exclusives.

Third, "Store Brands" are usually repackaged versions of other known products. "Charles Shaw" wine (infamously known as "Two-Buck Chuck") can be pretty good wine--it's the same wine that sells for $20 a bottle. But does a famous wine-maker want their wine to sell for that cheap? Nope. Bad for the image. So rather than "discounting" their wine, they sell it to Trader Joe's who relabel it as "Charles Shaw." They make money on the bulk purchase and they keep their fancy name. Needless to say, this certainly doesn't apply to Apple's Store, either.

Finally, the issue I have with Apple's Store is that it's the only one. While your grocery store doesn't stock Playboy because they want to "Think of the Children," I can buy Playboy at the local liquor store or magazine stand or various other places.

That's where the store analogy starts to break down. Apple runs the store. They're also the mayor of the town. They've decided that anybody who wants to run a store in their town has to pay them a 30% tax. The mayor will decide what kind of stores will be in his town. And if you don't like it, you can move out of town.

Make it a web app

[the computer guy nex]

No reason to need a native app for pins on a map.

The only reason to make it a native app is to get the exposure from the App Store, which is the exact reason apps like this get denied.

The content doedn't matter

[thetoadwarrior]

The app is basically a web page. It doesn't belong in the app store and should be used via safari.

Apple runs their store like many shops and decides what they want to sell. You can do whatever you want in the browser. Which is fine by me. We need to start pushing HTML 5 harder. It's pretty good to go on real browsers.

Re:Content Neutrality

[Americano]

You are not so free if you live in a place where your TLS connections are being tampered with -- which is, unfortunately, quite a lot of places. The App Store gives you a digitally signed program, so you have at least some assurance that it was not tampered with (there are no CAs involved; Apple's key is built in). That is the benefit of the App Store; the problem is that the key holder (Apple) has absurd, far-right policies banning applications that might offend anyone or which criticize politicians (and don't think for a moment that this is anything less than an enforcement of conservative values; yes, Democrats are conservative).

How absurd. Apple's policies are no more "far right" than they are "far left." Their policies are "adhere to the blandly inoffensive at all times."

You will no more find "Whack the Christ-Loving White Trash" app for the iPhone than you will find "Whack a San Francisco Queer." Both would be wildly offensive to differing segments of the population, and Apple would ban both, because they don't want any potential customers to be offended into buying a competitor's product. You'll probably find "Whack a Mole" and other inoffensive variants of that same game, though; and apps like Evernote, Netflix, and Facebook are pretty much entirely inoffensive in their functionality, and so may be safely sold. (Best Buy will sell you a DVD player... but they won't sell you porn, will they? Why do you imagine that is?)

This leaves you - the self-styled free-thinker demographic that just likes to get offended and cries "censorship" because somebody tries to keep their store bland and inoffensive, even though all the "offensive" content you want is a single click away in a web browser on ANY device. Fortunately for Apple, you're a fairly small market, and you would've bought a competitor's device anyway, so you're both irrelevant to and happily negligible in their business decisions.