Apple Boots out the Booty
Friday, February 19, 2010 at 2:34PM In The Apple Soft Porn Store, I wrote about the standard of some of the content in the App Store. To reiterate, my main problem was not that these applications existed but rather that the parental controls available were not appropriately filtering them out of listings and search.
Today, TechCrunch reports that Apple has started pulling "overtly sexual" applications from the App Store. This is good news for anyone trying to deploy iPhone OS devices in an educational context.
I do feel a little uncomfortable that some developers have had the rug yanked out from under them. That said, if there was one kind of app that it was absolutely clear from day one that Apple looked down upon, it was "adult" apps. Steve Jobs said so on the day he announced the App Store. Why those rules haven't been enforced I'm not sure (I suspect lack of staff effort), but they are being enforced now.
Additionally, I just did a little check and iTunes (on the desktop) now hides the screenshots of apps whose ratings are above the level set in iTunes' parental controls. That was one of my main concerns in the earlier post and Apple has addressed this, which is great.
An unfortunate consequence of this, though, is that developers whose apps retrieve content from the web will all have their screenshots hidden. It's not my concern right now but, in the longer term, Apple needs to develop a way to distinguish between "Frequent/Intense {sexual,gambling, drug use,violent} content" and "accesses the internet".
I should add that I don't really claim personal credit for this. Apple's emails to developers cite "numerous customer complaints" which, I bet, outweigh my complaints 1000-to-1. Having said that, it was fairly clear that the App Store as it stood was inappropriate for use in schools and, with the launch of the iPad, I'm sure that's a market Apple want to target.
Reader Comments (6)
I'm not 100% sure that pulling the apps is the best solution. It seems to me like an easy way out. Of course, as you mentioned, Apple did say they wouldn't allow pornography on the App Store, but that was for a given definition of porn.
I think a better solution would be to do as you said an introduce filters that properly distinguish the apps that shouldn't be shown to younglings when parental controls are turned on.
So now kids cannot see previews of girls in underwear, but they can see brains being blown out with a shot gun and heads lopped off with a chainsaw <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/izombieland/id329778585?mt=8>. Win one for the the monitors of chicks in underwear ... wouldn't want inappropriate content in schools.
@ James - I think the definition they are using is fine. If you wouldn't want your 11 year old daughter dressing like the girls on those apps, then they probably shouldn't be approved. It might not be the more adult / hardcore porn, but that only makes it less obscene - but still obscene.
@ Joel - I agree.
So the standard for all software development is now 11 year old girls? If its not appropriate for them then it should be barred from the store?
This means we need to get rid of any stock or commodity trading apps. We don't want 11 year olds accidentally opening an etrade account and spending millions, right?
Car manuals? Right out-- I mean, even if the manual is appropriate a child may not know how to rebuild an engine correctly. Think of the people who could die in the resulting wreck?
This is all jsut code for prudishness.
I know people are prudes, but Apple should not be censoring anything.
Simply bifrucate the store. On one side is everything that is not intentionally adult-- and this includes ereaders, even if they can have kama sutra added to them. And on the other, everything that is intentionally adult. make them like separate stores.
IF some kid downloads a browser from the non-adult store and manages to load a porn site on it, when its obvious that it wasn't intentional created to be a browser for porn, and some parent complains then Apple needs to be responsible and treat it the way tehy would if a kid browsed for porn on the family Mac using safari, and the parent blamed apple.
@gweedo
The standard is not suppose to be that of an 11 year old, I was just making a point. The "standard" should be what the mass market wants. The mass market is what families, schools, and businesses want. On the schools and business front, most of what you are talking about is blocked or heavily monitored. People are fired left and right for checking out that sort of content. Some families do control the internet with software, but most don't. So in this sense your point is a valid point. The problem is that when mom or dad opens Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer, they are confronted with their homepage.
If mom or dad opens up the App Store and is confronted by the top app of "Wobble iBoobs", they are going to pass on the iPad. They have no "real" way to filter the content with software. They can only remove the App Store.
The real solution would be to really dig into the age limits of apps. The eBay app should not be in the same category as the Playboy app, even if you can use eBay for bad things. They need to find a better way to control (see, it's all about control even when it's about freedom) those age limits, and what the content is.
If they are going to allow Playboy and the SI Swimsuit it is pretty scandalous of them to kick everything else out. That is a horrible double-standard even if I am glad to see the content gone. That's like saying all indie game developers are gone, but EA and Capcom are staying.
The content does need to be controlled and my solution would be this:
When submitting an app they have to answer if the content is sexual in nature - then outline what they mean with examples.
If the answer is yes, it is labeled as such and is NOT enabled by default to be searched for. An administrator would have to give access.
A slight digression, but on pr0n filtering. We once worked on a local government website and we had a gallery of the team bringing you something or other to your local area. All was fine except for one guy whose face didn't display on the internal network. Turned out they had aggressive filtering for porn and his blocked his face due to too much fleshtone tripping the nude filter. The guy had a fat face. The point is that automated filtering doesn't work.