'Hide It Hillary' mobile game banned by Apple, title like 'Punch Trump' approved

http://washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/2/hillary-clinton-hide-it-mobile-app-game-banned-by-/

by sergiotapia • 10 years ago

173 57 10 years ago

dominotw• 10 years ago

Do they issue 'political guidelines' to their employees doing the screening or do things like these simply get escalated to the top where someone like the CEO makes the decision.

codegeek• 10 years ago

strange. This post was flagged and even showed up dead just a few mins ago. Did the mods restore this ?

douche2• 10 years ago

Probably the "vouch" feature working. Countdown on it being flagged down again: 1, 2, 3...

nommm-nommm• 10 years ago

And it's flagged again.

koolba• 10 years ago

Where does the vouch link show up? I don't recall ever seeing one.

sergiotapia2• 10 years ago

It's disgusting how this is flagged. Stop trying to hide facts.

themartorana• 10 years ago

Anyone that knows anything about the Apple App Store knows this piece is a little uninformed.

1. The two apps were probably reviewed by different people, and approvals from Apple have always been all over the place depending on the reviewer.

"The independent developers said getting approved with Google took less than one hour, while Apple’s denial came after an eight-hour wait."

2. 8 hour wait? Wow. I remember when the App Store had an 8 day review time. Let's keep in mind that Google rarely has a human review it's App submissions, Apple has a human review all of theirs, including updates.

In any case, the second half of this article is a Clinton hit piece, dropping all mention of apps and app stores and recounting again the Clinton emails story and focusing on negative reactions to it.

This was flagged and dead and should be again.

Jimmy• 10 years ago

This was flagged and dead and should be again.

Strange. It almost sounds like you're afraid of this article for some reason?

And I'm saying that as someone who abhors Trump and is trying to get everyone I know to vote for Hillary. I just hate double standards is all.

geofft• 10 years ago

Not 'themartona, but, I'm afraid of this article.

I'm afraid that we're not able to discuss interesting technical issues without the overtone of this presidential election's good-vs.-evil campaign (and both sides see themselves as good and the other as evil). We couldn't even have a rational discussion about a secretary of state not being able to use a mobile device with official email. It quickly became a discussion about the evil, corrupt secretary of state killing innocent ambassadors by using a private email server. Every interesting technical issue - and, in fact, every interesting political issue, about how the most powerful government in the world can't provide useful email services to its secretary of state, and how we got there - was drowned out by the good-vs.-evil talk.

I'm afraid that comments about the candidates instead of the technical issues will dominate. I can't even come up with a more silly example than the present one: something happened to Trump but not Clinton, or Clinton but not Trump, and with no evidence that this is about the candidates, it must be that one of them is evil and silencing dissent or paying off Apple or something.

I'm afraid that the tenor of us-vs.-them, good-vs.-evil arguments from the rest of the internet is infecting HN.

I'm afraid that well-reasoned criticism of the political candidates is getting ignored just because so much of it is ill-reasoned. If we expect every single article to have paragraphs of "BTW Hillary sux" or "BTW Donald sux", how do we expect to have actual, serious discussions of where the candidates are good or bad.

I'm afraid that articles like this are becoming normal.

Yes, I'm afraid of this article.

bradleybuda• 10 years ago

You're 100% correct, the article is uninformed about normal app review processes. However, the point about Apple rejecting a satirical anti-Hillary app while approving a number of apps depicting and encouraging physical violence towards Trump stands.

IMHO, the article is flawed, and clearly from a biased perspective, but there's enough of a valid point in there for it to stand.

mst• 10 years ago

They quoted the FBI statement directly, and ended with the point that all charges had been dropped.

Calling that a "hit piece" does not, to me, seem particularly reasonable.

fenomas• 10 years ago

One suspects that the underlying story here is: "Of the dozens of political apps submitted recently, some have been accepted and some have been rejected, with no apparent rhyme or reason. Here are two."

hedora• 10 years ago

Regardless of Apple's review process, the article makes a good point -- go search the app store for election related terms. There is almost no mention of Hillary, one way or another. In addition to lots of trump themed games, you'll find Fox news, Bernie and foreign elections. When Hillary is mentioned, she is in a screenshot for trump themed games.

Election news apps almost always show Trump in screenshots. It is hard to argue there is no supply of Hillary content if they are preferentially rejecting such apps.

Anyway, Apple's vetting process doesn't seem to be helping get minority (of developer resources) content into the store, and that seems relevant to HN.

existencebox2• 10 years ago

I'm quite curious about this article, less about the words, more about how it's being received.

It has 43 upvotes in 41 minutes. For a rather bland subject, that's not half bad (point wise), potentially motivated by the political conflict involved, but that happens.

However, in the time I've queued it in my "morning reading", I've refreshed it quite a few times and watched it flag, unflag, flag, unflag at least 5-6 rotations as I've tried to post this comment. I'm legitimately curious as to why there's so much distaste for this with so little discussion. There is certainly very little evidence to the claim of the article, and that could be called out as HN has an excellent (I mean this honestly, comments are very quick to say "this article has no substance, here is why" and I see that as a plus) history of, but the overall question of the potential for political censorship through the increasingly few gatekeepers of walled garden web content does raise some meta questions I've seen HN discuss on many other occasions with far less prompting.

I guess I'm asking two things. 1. Although there is not much empiricism in the article, is there not a meaningful discussion to be had about the above; and 2. I'm curious as to what would incite people to want to flag so hard rather than let a thread get some immediate momentum and then die off from lack of content as it is like to. (It's not even as with the snowden releases where the entire front page was snowden for a good few weeks :) )

djrogers• 10 years ago

There is certainly very little evidence to the claim of the article

Little evidence? The claim is that this app was rejected and Trump satire apps are allowed - what evidence are you expecting other than the existence of the Punch Trump style apps on the App Store? Do you want a letter signed by Tim Cook saying that the App Store policies are intentionally biased?

existencebox2• 10 years ago

You're providing evidence that the outcome exists in the real world. This is true. You are not providing evidence (neither did they) for the motive they described.

A letter would be nice (to the QA testers who vet these games) but because I (having been a QA at one point who could have had the ability to make similar decisions about what gets into games with almost no oversight, training, or checks+balances, albeit for a much more no-name group) really doubt that's the situation, I would also be more swayed by demonstrating a track record for single-party support historically, and potentially contrasting with other app stores over that time period, since I could absolutely see this occuring due to what I mention. (Improper checks and balances, lack of clear guidelines, less formal/consistent vetting process)

My "there is no evidence" should be taken as "the article seemed more conviction by 'THIS IS WRONG' than conviction by 'we find these systemic issues, here is the support for them'. In fact, it loops back to my original comment, in that both the articles and the flaggers were making a statement while providing very little other than the statement itself to support it.

cscurmudgeon3• 10 years ago

A quick search shows titles like "Never Hillary", "Avoid Hillary", "Hillary Clinton Cross the Road".

What do you say about that?

I mentioned this in another comment, but was downvoted for exposing obvious buffoonery.

almostApatriot12• 10 years ago

There are satire apps on Itunes targeting Hillary Clinton.

It's very easy to make your case when you cherrypick one data point out of thousands.

Here's an app called Avoid Hillary[0] where you're Bill Clinton trying to dodge his wife. I honestly don't see how a boxing game with Donald Trump is any worse.

[0] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/avoid-hillary/id1009997468?m...

sandworm101• 10 years ago

It has both 'Hillary' and 'Trump' in the title. Between those who care too much about one or the other, and those sick to death of the mindless prattle, political stories are going to get flagged.

MaysonL2• 10 years ago

I do find it interesting that all of the instances of "Hillary", "Hillary Clinton", or "Mrs. Clinton" are hyperlinks to the WaPo Hillary Clinton topic page, while none of the Trump references are links…

dogma1138• 10 years ago

This looks more like an oddity of their CMS, as contextual content tagging is usually automated. That said considering just how loosely trump throws the word "lawsuit" around and actually acts upon it, it wouldn't surprise me if WaPo and some other media outlets disabled auto-tagging on his name.

grej2• 10 years ago

They are a private enterprise and can do what they want, but the optics aren't great. For the sake of PR they should try and maintain at least the appearance of being unbiased. Perhaps develop a single policy for politically oriented apps, and stick to it in all cases.

PS - Also noticed this was flagged & removed, then restored. Very glad to see it was restored as this is a very relevant thing to be talking about in the current political climate.

dawnerd2• 10 years ago

Honestly don't think they should allow apps like hide Hillary or punch trump. They're low value and only promote hate towards the person.

grej2• 10 years ago

Yeah, I'm of two minds on it. On the one hand, it reflects the current climate and allowing both would be the more "free speechy" way to go. But on the other, I think apps that target an individual person - any individual not just a political leader - I think are exactly as you said - really low value and promoting hate. Either way they go, they should clearly stick to one policy for both sides.

iLoch• 10 years ago

Not sure I'd put the two apps in the same category other than the fact that they're both political. I haven't played them, but one is appears to be raising awareness about very controversial (and possibly corrupt) behaviour, the other is inciting violence against a presidential candidate. If Apple wants to say "no politics allowed" that's fine by me, they can do what they want. But I think they should follow through with that, and not take sides. At the same time, they should be free to operate however they please within the confines of the law. So to me the only thing wrong with what they're doing is that it just looks bad.

wyager• 10 years ago

How does "Hide it Hillary" promote hate? It's satirizing something she actually did in real life. "Punch Trump", on the other hand, has violence in it, but even that is not sufficient to claim that it promotes violence.

the84722• 10 years ago

Why should they police what users can do with their devices at all? Providing strong guidance for the purpose of security seems reasonable considering that not everyone is computer-literate.

Anything else, that is policing content, seems self-serving (upholding brand image or whatever), dictatorial (imposing moral values, such as nudity == evil) and user-hostile.

DasIch• 10 years ago

Why should they appear to be unbiased?

the84722• 10 years ago

They are a private enterprise and can do what they want

I'm somewhat skeptical of this argument.

For the lower protocol layers we indeed do have common carrier status/net neutrality rules.

The upper layers ostensibly see competition. But it is competition with strong customer-lockin. Consider people for which a smartphone is a big investment. If they buy an iPhone then they're now part of apple's fiefdom and all their regulations and imposition of moral values.

kartan• 10 years ago

They are a private enterprise and can do what they want

No. Private enterprises have to obey the rule of law. If they don't accept an app, for example, because its developer is Muslim it will be discrimination. They can, however, ban apps with a green background just because.

Another different thing is that as Apple and Google have such a big impact on what people can use or not some extra checks can be in place. They are not a monopoly but a oligopoly.

nitrogen3• 10 years ago

The "private companies can do what they want" / caveat emptor argument has to stop working at some point in a company's size and pervasiveness. There are loads of examples of things that private companies are not allowed to do.

Some extreme examples for an existence proof: sell DIY pet euthanasia kits, sell candy with bits of embedded glass, bury leaky canisters of toxic waste in the local water table...

Some less extreme examples to help move closer to the line of allowed/disallowed behavior: refuse ER treatment based on ability to pay, refuse to provide phone service based on phone number dialed, refuse to seat a patron based on skin color, refuse to bake a wedding cake based on religion or sexual orientation.

So, having established the existence of restraints on corporate bevavior, and the diversity and reasonableness of many of those constraints, where would the line be drawn for companies like Apple, Facebook, Twitter, and Google that have an oligopoly on most online communication and mobile software distribution?

ihuman• 10 years ago

The problem (if you could call it that) is that there are multiple people reviewing apps. While there are rules, each person has a different interpretation of them, which results in issues like this.

eli• 10 years ago

Never attribute to malice that which can equally be explained by carelessness.

My experience with completely nonpolitical apps strongly suggests the app approval process is very arbitrary and inconsistent across the board.

pkinsky3• 10 years ago

If it were just a matter of creating two political apps, one anti-red and one anti-blue, and observing that the anti-blue one is banned, I'd agree. The article cites 3 different games focussed on simulating violence against Trump, though, which to me is enough to suggest a trend.

cscurmudgeon3• 10 years ago

Just search on the app store, you will find anti Hillary apps.

sitic• 10 years ago

Apple could have been rejecting one hundred apps which mock Trump without us knowing. You're a suggesting a trend based on a single data point.

danso• 10 years ago

Yeah, it's not hard to believe that the decisions were made by two different low level employees, one who knows the rules and the other who doesn't. It's not as if these all get kicked up to Tim Cook's desk at the end of the day (though this one will be, thanks to press coverage)

sergiotapia2• 10 years ago

I attribute it to Apple and other Sillicon Valley companies being in favor of H1B legislations, and Hillary Clinton is the candidate that supports it from the get go.

TheLarch• 10 years ago

"In 2002, at an event held to celebrate the Times's 20th anniversary, Moon said: 'The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God' and 'The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world.'" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times]

waterphone• 10 years ago

The Washington Times is indeed not at all a trustworthy news outlet. It is incredibly politically biased, to the point of overt absurdity. Due to the name, however, some continue to confuse it with the Washington Post and assume it has legitimate content.

franksunjin• 10 years ago

I believe Software Engineers should be conservatives. Because when anything is doing wrong, the first we can think of is rollback.

cscurmudgeon3• 10 years ago

Politically I don't care as I am not a US citizen. But just a quick search shows titles like "Never Hillary", "Avoid Hillary", "Hillary Clinton Cross the Road".

lumberjack• 10 years ago

I remember Stallman and many others, I believe even on HN, so not long ago, talking out against walled gardens.

Now it's the norm.

pkinsky3• 10 years ago

For those flagging this, why not try an experiment? Put together two pallette-swapped games, perhaps 'Slap Hillary with a fish' and 'Slap Trump with a fish'. Submit these games to Apple and Google for app store approval.

If you're correct in your assumption that no bias exists, either both or none will be approved. If n=2 isn't enough, this should be easy to run with greater sample size.

jondoe• 10 years ago

Because every blue chip company has already pre purchase some new hillary act/law

almostApatriot12• 10 years ago

It's funny to see how holier than thou people get about these topics. Punch Trump "promotes violence" against Trump?? It's a game where you box with Trump (and he boxes back). What is this, the 1950's???

MaysonL2• 10 years ago

Go to the iTunes Store. Search for "Hillary".Enough anti-Clinton iPhone and iPad apps show up to indicate that this is an anomaly, not a systemic bias. The fact that a right-wing site got the WaPo to bite on it shows their gullibility rather than Apple's bias.

armenarmen• 10 years ago

I'm not sure how I feel about corporate censorship. On one hand we have property rights, which I believe in firmly and on the other hand we have freedom of speech/expression.

If we are going. To live in a world where public discourse takes place through private avenues we need to decide as a country which takes precedent, property rights or speech/expression.

chrisan• 10 years ago

If you follow enough links you'll get to the source of the story https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/50pfl4/appl...

Which does sound like it actually happened. However at current time it shows up in the app store.

'Hide It Hillary' mobile game banned by Apple, title like 'Punch Trump' approved

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