Apple bans ‘Hottest Girls’ App
Another day another banned iPhone App. This time it was a fairly route one app that simply displays pictures of women. The app was briefly tolerated by the App Store big wigs, leading to rumours that the store was relaxing its strict no adult content policy, until the developer started uploading topless pictures to it, at which point they shut it down… With extreme prejudice.
This is all well and good of course, if the App Store wants to maintain a family vibe then fine, though it’s just the latest in a long line of apps that have had to be embarrassingly banned after the fact including the blackjack cheating app and of course the unfortunate ‘baby shaker,’ which sadly for Apple actually ended up making national television news.
For a human reviewed service, this seems a bit strange, none of these apps have been exactly cryptic about what they were, I mean ‘Baby Shaker,’ etc., surely the titles alone are going to make you take another look and think carefully.
Another factor that has rankled with developers is the perceived inconsistency in the vetting process. Critics have pointed to the fact that whilst numerous apps have scantily clad women featured within them, other apps are routinely denied, based on use of even moderate bad language.
It seems Apple really need to do one of two things, either build proper age verification into the App Store, or actually decide what is or isn’t acceptable and stick to it religiously. It’s probably not the biggest deal in the world, though it doesn’t exactly reflect well on Apple that they can’t write and stick to a content policy.
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July 4th, 2009 at 4:29 pm
it’s a pity they banned it