Apple has threatened to remove Amphetamine from the App Store

Well-written argument for the app reviewers to get bent, especially the highlighted examples of other apps that show the rule is clearly applied inconsistently.

Apple's App Store moderation is embarrassing. They routinely fail to catch harmful junk—I've shut down a few top-grossing bogus antivirus apps for Mac, and the publisher of Untitled Goose Game routinely posts screenshots of clones that are trying to make money off confused users.

They've banned apps like Phone Story and a drone strike tracker for being "objectionable and crude," yet they don't apply any content moderation to the Book Store or to Music or TV (or to Safari for that matter). They've yet to provide a cogent justification for why they're inconsistent on this.

I don't necessarily agree that TV/Music/books need more moderation in terms of censorship (and they do have plenty of that), but more curation. Apple TV is a good example of that, it's highly curated.

Books are really bad though. Amazon is no better, neither have any modicum of curation or taste when it comes to their bestsellers lists. The New York Times doesn't put salacious romance novels at the top no matter how many copies sell, yet Amazon and Apple Books would lead you to believe there's nothing else being published.

The same goes for the App Store. It doesn't need moderation by way of censorship, it just needs tasteful, manual curation.

I mean the opposite—not that they should censor/moderate their other stores, but why are they hypocritical (edit: or inconsistent, if you prefer) in saying that certain content is harmful when consumed as an app, but not as a book or movie that they are happy to sell to you?

When apple bans an app, it ceases to exist on ios, effectively. Books, Music, and TV can be accessed through non-Apple controlled channels.

What are some TV content that's similar to these banned apps?

What's wrong with romance novels?

I think this is helping to make the case that they could be consistent in applying the guidelines to books/music/TV. "We're trying to be family-friendly, so we're not interested in selling any content that references drug use, but you're more than welcome to get it elsewhere." But they aren't; they only censor such content on the App Store.

Both Drone+ and Phone Story could have been done as web apps (which iOS supported before native apps), but of course there are many APIs that you cannot access from WebKit.

That's not hypocritical; it's surprising you can't see that.

An app is software that can be harmful to your device. Books and movies are not software and can't affect your device in any way.

Therefore, there is a very obvious justification for disallowing some apps; that doesn't apply for books or movies.

It's also not "hypocritical" for Apple to choose to have a curated App Store (which is feasible and realistic) but choose not to actively censor books (which isn't really feasible).

> An app is software that can be harmful to your device.

I'm only discussing moderation for content, rather than moderation for security, privacy, stability, etc.

> actively censor books (which isn't really feasible)

I don't think it's infeasible. I just searched for a piece of literature today on Apple's Book Store and instead found a book with a pretty raunchy title. Could they not at least moderate that?

Keep in mind they make it seem "feasible and realistic" that they can analyze apps to determine if they "can be harmful to your device," but anyone familiar with static analysis would know there are serious limitations to how much you can deduce about the behavior of an arbitrary binary.

See, for instance: https://www.reuters.com/article/apple-security-idUSN1E7A71ZS...

Banning books is widely considered to be a bad thing.

Apple's morality is very hit and miss at times. However it really comes down to squeaky wheel advocates get a lot of traction and Apple responds by going after the targets. Its a worse form of moral enforcement because its a completely moving target.

People, especially tech oriented folks, always seem to decry the threat of religious persecution by politicians but failed to recognize that enforcement of morals by any group can have very dangerous side effects. We see statements to that effect here all the time, people judged for lifestyle choices that are not in favor by one group or another. Morals become weaponized as they can be undefinable immeasurable standard applied to those who are no longer in favor by action, deed, or thought.

It seems like they just act when their PR team feels worried.

When an app that simply describes how a product is made is "objectionable and crude" it says a lot about the product.

And it is thus important to recognize that our cultural perception of book banning, book burning, etc as a bad thing isn't something intrinsic to humans, and its not something we got for free. It took years of effort from major authors and members of the literary community to shift that perception. And we need to fight that fight again for applications, and especially for platforms which give their users and developers no other recourse, on behalf of the vast majority of users who don't have the knowledge or context to understand why it matters.

Nothing! Just that they're over represented in listings and publishers/authors will game their way to the top of search and best seller results on book apps. It makes it more difficult to find content I would like to read.

I think the simplest explanation is that they don't have automated review processes for media like they do for software and Apple isn't a single person making decisions about what they sell on every app all the time.

That said, TV and movies are far more controlled than the App Store.

They're literally censoring JWZ's XScreensaver for iOS because they're worried about the political thoughts people might have watching one of the hacks.

The iOS App Store has got to go.