Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

https://reclaimthenet.org/apple-app-store-wechat-china

by spenvo • 3 years ago

244 152 3 years ago

srvmshr• 3 years ago

I use WeChat to talk to my in-laws in Mainland China. I am aware of the mini-apps that exist but they are severely lacking features & more of add on utilities to the WeChat interface.

For e.g. a popular one is a mini-app for DiDi cabs. It'll allow you to book a nearby cab & place a call/text using the WeChat integration. It is more of utility to WeChat/Weixin rather than an appstore within their app. Agreed it is somewhat borderline in definition, but the way I see it - the utilities and apps are sandboxed within WeChat ecosystem.

detourdog• 3 years ago

It is probably exciting for Apple to contemplate support for this type of platform. To see other cultural approaches is probably worth giving some freedom to becuase it will stretch their own thinking.

sn_master• 3 years ago

Interesting how they'll react to X. WeChat seems to be the closest thing to an "Everything App" that Elon wants to create.

sdfghswe2• 3 years ago

It's still twitter.

I love that your previous comment was that "people use twitter because of free speech", and now I can't even look at it without logging in. Proof that on the internet anyone can sound confident.

sourcecodeplz• 3 years ago

What does logging-in have to do with free speech?

stefan_• 3 years ago

WeChat is the "everything app" because it has a government monopoly. I'm sure there was and is some organic competition but it's also obvious they picked a winner and ran with it.

rat9988• 3 years ago

Can you tell us more about how the government picked the winner?

em-bee10• 3 years ago

it doesn't have a government monopoly any more than facebook has a monopoly elsewhere. it just happens to be the most popular app. others do exist but they don't market themselves to the average consumer.

justapassenger• 3 years ago

X is vaporware. And even if they add those features, adoption is a slightly more complex story.

Also look at Facebook. You can talk with friends. Send money. Interact with businesses. Play games. Date. Sell and buy stuff. And many more.

But they don’t have state supported monopoly position, so it’s not an everything app.

spacebanana72• 3 years ago

Much like Adobe did to Macs in the 1990s, WeChat has become so powerful they control the platform.

Apple can’t remove WeChat because most consumers would rather change device hardware than lose access to WeChat.

sdfghswe2• 3 years ago

Much like Adobe did to Macs in the 1990s, WeChat has become so powerful they control the platform.

I'd enjoy listening to the story here, spacebanana.

spacebanana72• 3 years ago

Adobe almost killed Apple by developing Windows-first and sometimes Windows-only products in the 1990s. Many professionals cared about Adobe software more than their hardware device, so moved platforms.

Adobe’s motivation was largely revenge against Apple for opening up printing standards. Previously Adobe had a de facto monopoly license on these.

Steve Jobs was extremely pissed off by seeing Apple get hurt for making a pro consumer decision that was good for the wider industry, and held the grudge for a long time. Even though he wasn’t CEO for much of this period.

This article has more detail if you’re interested [1]

[1] https://www.alphr.com/blogs/2010/05/05/apple-adobe-history/

pavlov• 3 years ago

The story with Adobe on Mac in the 1990s is that their apps were so important to the platform that they practically had a veto on the API for Apple’s next-gen OS.

When Apple acquired NeXT, the original plan was for the NeXT API (now called Cocoa) to become the only way to build apps on the new Mac OS. But Adobe made it clear they were not going to port everything to Objective-C. In response Apple came up with Carbon, which was a port of essential plain-C APIs from Classic Mac OS to the new environment.

Apple retaliated pretty hard in 2007-2010 by first knifing 64-bit Carbon when it had already shipped in Leopard betas, and later strangling Flash.

lessname• 3 years ago

Is it really the power of WeChat or the chinese government though?

afavour• 3 years ago

In this scenario it doesn’t really matter. They’re interchangeable.

em-bee10• 3 years ago

it's wechat. you really need it in china. it's practically impossible to stay in touch with most people if you don't have it. a phone that can't run wechat is pretty useless.

nextworddev• 3 years ago

They are basically the same

ChrisRR• 3 years ago

They're the same thing

yreg2• 3 years ago

App Store was never a totally level playing field either. Amazon Prime Video got a discount on App Store fees[0]. FaceBook[1] and Uber[2] did things for which they got a slap on the wrist. If a less-important developer did that, they would have been banned from the App Store forever.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/7/30/21348108/apple-amazon-pri...

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/30/18203551/apple-facebook-b...

[2] https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/23/15399438/apple-uber-app-s...

hackernewds2• 3 years ago

Always blows my mind that Epic lost to Apple, it is the clearest example of a champion - making monopoly that has ever existed.

fmajid2• 3 years ago

Marc Andreessen famously predicted Netscape would reduce Windows to "a poorly debugged collection of device drivers". WeChat, as the "everything app" Musk aspires to turn Twitter into (ha!) has effectively done that to both iOS and Android.

ecf2• 3 years ago

Marc Andreessen is out of touch and doesn’t deserve to be brought up anymore.

thaumasiotes• 3 years ago

most consumers would rather change device hardware than lose access to WeChat

This seems like an understatement.

joshstrange4• 3 years ago

I'm not sure this article has the slam dunk it thinks it does. Those aren't "apps" they are at best "web apps". They use a JS framework and some special markup from what I can tell. In this sense WeChat is more akin to a web browser than having multiple "apps" inside it.

Since these are “apps within an app”, many of these mini-programs are flouting the App Store rules since they were not downloaded from the App Store.

I mean Drafts has the ability to download actions (not sure if that is the right term) which are JS that run inside the app. I think this is fine and doesn't skirt any rules, I don't see why WeChat is all that different.

All that said, of course Apple is going to make exceptions for WeChat the same way it makes various concessions to other countries.

thefounder• 3 years ago

> I mean Drafts has the ability to download actions (not sure if that is the right term) which are JS that run inside the app. I think this is fine and doesn't skirt any rules,

I'm not familiar with that particular app but if that happens it's not fine and it seems to get a pass from Apple. The apps are not allowed to download executable code. You have to bundle it all in the app.

ecedeno• 3 years ago

That's not exclusive to that app. Being able to update the app without going through the App Store was one of the big selling points of React Native a few years back. Apps are not allowed to download native code, however.

summerlight• 3 years ago

Regardless of its implementation, everything in the app is subject to the rule as long as it's distributed in the App Store. In fact, Apple tried to enforce the same rule on WeChat multiple times but gave up since it practically means giving up the entire China market.

bunga-bunga2• 3 years ago

Regardless of its implementation

Implementation is very much part of the rules. Apps cannot download and execute external code… unless it’s JavaScript in a browser.

Nothing in the article suggests that WeChat apps are not plain websites, so it seems that they don’t know the rules nor the alleged rule breaker’s technical side.

I wouldn’t exclude that WeChat really does get a pass from Apple, but the article does not clarify this important point.

srcreigh• 3 years ago

Apple bans alternative web browsers too... so..

joshstrange4• 3 years ago

I assume you are replying to this part?

WeChat is more akin to a web browser than having multiple "apps" inside it
> Apple bans alternative web browsers too... so..

If they use a different browser engine they are currently banned but you can wrap Safari/webkit like every browser app on iOS does and provide different chrome/features. WeChat isn't embedding a different rendering engine, just using webkit.

squeaky-clean2• 3 years ago

I thought Apple disallowed apps from downloading things that were executable. A team I was on got rejected for this in 2015 or so. We were using Ionic to make a WebView based app for a news station. We wanted some of the css and js to be loaded from the internet so we could change various things without needing an official app update.

We were told to we could fetch news story data from an api, and get back json/xml/etc, but not JS and CSS files.

em-bee10• 3 years ago

i don't know what you did, but see this discussion here: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23247809/does-apple-reje...

though it's not really clear to me what it means to change your app's functionality in a way that would not be appropriate for an App Store product

joshstrange4• 3 years ago

I know of multiple apps that have that ability and I've personally shipped 10+ cross-platform apps built on Quasar+Vue+Capacitor and Ionic+Angular+Cordova/Capacitor and a few have had the ability to remotely update the code (just the JS/HTML/CSS) and they have all been approved. I am interested in the exact way the rejection was worded. IIRC their dev agreement had an exception, at one point, to the "no downloading executable code" rule, it said that using downloaded code in JavascriptCore was allowed. Apple doesn't seem to approve of remote updating but they seem to turn a blind eye to it, I would assume most big companies that use these cross-platform tools like this have a way to remotely update the code (JS/HTML/CSS).

I totally believe they rejected your app though, App Store review is pretty bad. I mean at least they are _way_ faster now but it's reviewer roulette for sure. I've been dinged for things that aren't even in the App Store dev agreement, they were in some other document. Even worse the reviewer told me I needed to change my wording when requesting a permission, the problem? She wanted me to change text I don't control in the permissions dialog. I explained that I only had control over the single string in quotes but she told me I was wrong (I got through on the next review). The inconsistency in the review process is maddening and so much of it is reading the tea leaves of what they actually want and what is allowed. I mean, we all know it's against the rules to send advertising/marketing push notifications right? Right? That _never_ happens in the App Store... Make whatever rules you want but dear god please enforce them consistently and change/remove a rule if you've decided to not enforce it.

zoltrix303• 3 years ago

I've never actually developed a mini program, but worked on projects with our china teams to develop some activation for our brand on WeChat.

What I understand is that a mini program needs to be "packaged" and shipped to WeChat as a bundle. The size of the bundle is relatively small. (~10mb ?)

Of course you can load some content from outside, not everything is within those 10mb, but I think it's still relatively limited. Calling it apps within apps is a stretch.

interpol_p2• 3 years ago

It’s really dependent on what reviewer you get. I develop a coding app for iPad (Codea) and for the longest time was not allowed to let users share their code in any form. I asked the reviewer “but they can just copy and paste it?” And the reviewer said “that is ok.”

In the end, it was down to whether it _looked like_ your app was downloading executable code more than whether it actually did. Reviewers are non-technical, and when the policy is technical they often make an inference that may be incorrect — however they will not budge on that without consulting actual engineers further up the chain, which can take weeks

They have become a lot more relaxed about this policy in the last five years or so (ever since Shortcuts)

yding• 3 years ago

Here's a stat I heard a few years back: WeChat has over 50% time share in China. Meaning people in China are on WeChat more than all other apps on their phones combined.

nathansherburn2• 3 years ago

That seems high to me. A lot of people seem to spend most of their time on xiaohongshu (like Pinterest?), douyin (tiktok), bilibili (like YouTube) etc. WeChat is good for its utility functions like ordering a Didi, chatting with friends or ordering from a restaurant but for entertainment (where people spend most of their time) it's pretty basic.

spenvo• 3 years ago

This rules inconsistency (alongside unpredictable (dis-)approvals and double standards for WeChat, Roblox, and (at times) Amazon and others) came up as one of a dozen reasons that, as a solo casual game developer, _launching_ in the App Store is not necessarily the no-brainer decision it seemed to be a decade ago (despite its enormous market power) I lay out in a separate post here https://keydiscussions.com/2023/07/26/as-a-web-game-dev-poin...

threeseed• 3 years ago

There are about ~2m apps on the iOS App Store.

And if we assume on average 10 updates to each app then we have ~20m approvals/rejections.

Given that the process involves real people it is only normal for there to be many inconsistencies and double standards at this scale. Especially when the rules have evolved over the last 15 years and you have app developers who like to push the limits of what's allowed.

ImPostingOnHN3• 3 years ago

the issue is that this double standard is conscious and intentional, rather than simply an artifact of probability

dmonitor• 3 years ago

surely twitter also had the double standard, since i’ve never seen anything done to twitter despite the massive amount of nsfw on the app

gaoshan• 3 years ago

If WeChat was not permitted on iPhones, iPhones would not sell in China.

CharlesW• 3 years ago

And would not be purchased by many people around the world.

ChrisArchitect• 3 years ago

(2020)

Anything new since?

annexrichmond• 3 years ago

Just like how Apple killed Tumblr for porn problems but gave Twitter a pass

notaustinpowers2• 3 years ago

From what I understand is was more because Tumblr had a much younger user demographic with very ineffective content reporting tools. Allowed NSFW content without a desktop opt-in function. And also being bought by Yahoo who wanted to cash in on Tumblr advertising probably played a huge role in it too.

Twitter skews older, requires desktop opt-in for NSFW content, and (before Musk) had decent content reporting functions.

tumult2• 3 years ago

Do you have any information about this? Where did you hear this? I'd always heard it was because some people at Apple used Twitter, but nobody used Tumblr, so Tumblr didn't get a free pass from arbitrary torment.

numpad04• 3 years ago

This is just me rambling but I think there's a simple explanation to Tumblr, Twitter and WeChat: Tumblr was a global app with English speaking userbase. Twitter and WeChat are de facto country-specific apps that Apple has no clear pictures on.

The latter two are "big in ___" apps that are hardly known anywhere else, namely SA, Japan, and China, to which anything HQ in California do will only cause unpredictable and unobservable, likely negative financial impacts. I'm from "Asia" but all I know about WeChat is about as much as that it's a brand with a logo, that's it.

Apple et al allows maximum leniency, budget and local decisions for those local apps because of that. "No one's using it anyway", only cash is coming in, so whatever happens there won't matter anyway, as long as the gig won't stop. Hell, if they need datacenter for all data to stay in China, so be it, if they need extra rapid payments to keep Shinjuku going, so be it.

Tumblr is different; they have US users and negative impacts can be readily measured. So they - its owner Yahoo! US at the time of its death - were not scared to do whatever.

NikkiA• 3 years ago

Twitter banned (female only) nipples. The fact there is porn on twitter is largely 'despite the rules'

game_the0ry• 3 years ago

When the west opened trade to China, policy experts assumed China would become more liberal like the west. Instead, the west is becoming more like China. [1, 2, 3]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/googles-web-integrit...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/ready-for-your-e...

[3] (countless more examples, especially recently...)

derefr3• 3 years ago

China is becoming more liberal in the classical sense (more money accruing to regular "new money" entrepreneurs instead of to oligarchs); they just haven't hit the "borgeoisie-funded revolt against the aristocracy" phase of liberalization yet. Give them 50 years.

Georgelemental• 3 years ago

They hit it in the 90s, except it failed hard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...

woooooo4• 3 years ago

They boiled the frog with the bourgeoisie. For a long time, there were workarounds if you're generally smart and educated. Nowadays its a hacker level operation to get on a VPN.

deciplex7• 3 years ago

What aristocracy? And over half the Chinese economy is state-run.

bitcuration• 3 years ago

You're in a pipe dream. All the money accrued can and always will feed the ever bigger oligarchs and spreading their power around the world, effectively why the west are more like china in the question. It's already made sure systemically there will never be a "bourgeoisie" united strong enough in china, not in another 500 years. And soon not in the west either.

dvt• 3 years ago

Worldcoin is a terrible example imo, it's beyond DOA. Much like the rest of crypto, no one will seriously use it, unless we're talking speculation. I think that the riots in HK, the united front against Russia, etc. clearly show that the rest of the world believes free markets are the way to do things and it's just a matter of time (probably when Putin + Jinping bite the dust) until China/Russia also adopt more (classical) liberal stances.

If you're hinting at authoritarianism, Trump has been repudiated by most, and the Republican party is in shambles right now (which is how such a weak Democrat was able to win). I don't really see the doomer point of view.

TillE• 3 years ago

policy experts assumed China would become more liberal

No one actually thinks that, it's just the line they use to justify themselves to the public. Like how Saudi Arabia has been promising amazing "reforms" for the better part of a decade.

woooooo4• 3 years ago

Back in the 90s, we really were that arrogant. Policy makers believed history was over and we had won.

We had just done it to Russia successfully (short-term). Why not China?

nitwit005• 3 years ago

It does work to an extent. I doubt Saudi Arabia would have let women drive if it hadn't been for the influence of the wider world.

What isn't going to happen is the leadership suddenly deciding they love democracy and giving up power.

trompetenaccoun2• 3 years ago

That was genuinely assumed to work and arguably did somewhat happen initially until Xi got to power.

delfinom• 3 years ago

Saudi Arabia did inch along a tiny bit with some reforms, it only took a younger dictator to coup his father.

Usually that's the biggest problem worldwide, the old hold on to old ways to their deaths and prevent any kind of change. And this is a newer phenomena in human history because modern medicine has extended lifespans far beyond the days of old.

flohofwoe• 3 years ago

It worked mostly fine for most of Eastern Europe after 1990 (with a couple of notable exceptions, like Russia). We tend to focus on the few black sheep where it didn't work, maybe because in hindsight the cases where it worked look so "obvious".

xadhominemx• 3 years ago

Your example for how the US is becoming more like China is… a crackdown on copyrights? Haha

handsclean• 3 years ago

Google’s “web integrity API” is a system to prevent use of software not authorized by a centralized, unelected authority. Even Google’s deceitful claims about it aren’t about copyright, but auth and anti-cheat.

eunos2• 3 years ago

policy experts assumed China would become more liberal like the west.

There are many flavors of liberalism and yes 2023 China is more liberal than 1980 China.

If you could explain 2023 China to Deng Xiaoping in 1980 he'd think China would be a degenerate state.

The fethism with political liberalism above all needs to stop

Barrin92• 3 years ago

Yup, Deng literally invaded Vietnam and rolled tanks over dissidents. In Lee Kuan Yew's Biography he recounts talking to Deng shortly after Tiananmen, and Deng by LKY's account just said straight to his face "if I had to kill a hundred thousand students to restore order, I would have done it".

I genuinely have to laugh when people tend to say things like "I wish China was as liberal as it was back under Deng", people have concocted some serious alt-history if they think China today isn't more liberal than it was decades ago

howinteresting• 3 years ago

Privacy. That's iPhone.

meowtimemania• 3 years ago

I don't totally understand the concept of having an everything app. Isn't the OS the "everything app"?

Do people like the wechat experience because you have one login and don't have to go through an onboarding process in every mini-app?

bunga-bunga2• 3 years ago

I don't totally understand the concept of having an everything app. Isn't the OS the "everything app"?

Why are you downloading apps from the App Store instead of running separate OSes? This is the same concept, just one level down.

Really, WeChat is just a browser with extra APIs and a website catalog.

Do people like the wechat experience because you have one login and don't have to go through an onboarding process in every mini-app?

I’m not fully familiar with its history, but from what I understand Tencent added more and more “apps” to their chat app and eventually let third parties into it. This is exactly what Facebook did in 2010: we also had third party “apps” on Facebook. They were also just iframed websites with extra APIs.

Andrex• 3 years ago

I’m not fully familiar with its history, but from what I understand Tencent added more and more “apps” to their chat app and eventually let third parties into it. This is exactly what Facebook did in 2010: we also had third party “apps” on Facebook. They were also just iframed websites with extra APIs.

It's crazy how long ago this feels. FarmVille legitimately took over the country for a bit.

oldgradstudent• 3 years ago

I don't totally understand the concept of having an everything app. Isn't the OS the "everything app"?

The web browser is an everything app on your desktop.

As Marc Andreessen said at the time:

Netscape will soon reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers.

gottorf• 3 years ago

As Marc Andreessen said at the time:
> Netscape will soon reduce Windows to a poorly debugged set of device drivers.

It's funny how history proved him so wrong and so right at the same time.

wkat42422• 3 years ago

I think they 'like' it more because it's the Chinese communist party control and surveillance tool. So they make it ubiquitous in China. Whether they like it or not doesn't matter. Choice is not really free there.

I mean, there are some other choices but they also answer to the party. It's more for show.

em-bee10• 3 years ago

wechat got popular all on its own. nobody is forced to install wechat. there are also no government services that you might want to use that would "encourage" you to install it.

em-bee10• 3 years ago

the concept is that the primary feature that wechat provides is your identity with your wechat account. you connect to other people and you have verified their identity as well. from there it is most logical that you then want to use that identity to share work, make appointments, pay for things, etc.

the miniapp that we used the most was a voting tool. you could see who in the group had voted for what and it was very useful to have it all integrated, as opposed to an external website where none of the voters were verified to be the same people from the group.

sending money is also a no brainer once you can trust that the person you are sending money to is really the same one. and external payment system means that you would have to verify that the person you are sending money to is the same person you were talking to on wechat. that's just extra steps. if happens of course otherwise alipay would not exist, but part of that is because alibaba has other features (like the market) that people want to use, and they do not support wechat pay. i wuld suspect that if they had supported wechat pay, then alipay would not have been able to gain any significant market share at all.

vanjajaja1• 3 years ago

I'm not even anon on twitter, but bonkers to think that people would want to directly connect their finances to things they say in online in public in this day and age

numpad04• 3 years ago

It's just that if you had more user distraction on your app in a single-app platform, that'll earn your app some long tail of extra attention and bad user decisions and therefore revenue. Kind of like a chat window in e-commerce websites, or imagine on the bottom right of HN were a miniature minesweeper screen. Add enough of those and someone calls yours a superapp.

gantrol• 3 years ago

Because nearly all Chinese people use WeChat, but not all Chinese people use iPhones.

For Chinese people, you could say that WeChat serves as an OS with a greater coverage. It could even be said that WeChat represents half of China's mobile Internet.

Only after acquiring a substantial user base did WeChat launch its "Mini Programs". This feature has further boosted the usage of WeChat. For instance, during the COVID-19 pandemic, certain types of apps forced people in remote areas to start using WeChat. However, the fundamental reason is that the usage rate of WeChat was already high.

This explains why, outside of China, WeChat's "Mini Programs" aren't particularly striking: in those regions, there simply aren't enough WeChat users.

znpy• 3 years ago

I don’t find that surprising at all. Apple and China are both regimes and it’s not surprising at all they go hand in hand.

lencastre• 3 years ago

Because Jina

chrononaut• 3 years ago

The concatenation of "Apple is" might make this the most egregious garden-path sentence[0] I have read in the last few months. I had to re-read this multiple times.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence

trompetenaccoun2• 3 years ago

And with Apple’s shareholders not in agreement to actually put their money where their mouth is when it comes to human rights, it’s not likely Apple is going to go against China anytime soon.

Interesting link in that last paragraph: https://reclaimthenet.org/apple-rejects-freedom-of-expressio...

bitwize• 3 years ago

Back in the 90s when the PlayStation was released, Sony Computer Entertainment America implemented rules about which sorts of games would and would not be approved: specifically, you needed to be developing 3D polygon games. If you were developing a sprite-based game, you were likely unable to get approval to publish it. We missed out on a lot of great Japanese sprite based games this way, simply because they didn't fit into SCEA's marketing strategy based around the idea that sprites are old hat, and the PlayStation is the sexy new console that leaves all that behind in favor of 3D polygons.

Of course, Sony made exceptions to this policy for major publishers and their big-ticket franchises like Capcom with Street Fighter...

xxoo• 3 years ago

This article is obviously biased in every possible way to measure it.

1. WeChat is not the only app that comes with "mini program", Alipay for a big example. 2. WeChat is not the only app that delivers news and media information and consumes a huge amount of users's time, DouYin for a big example.

Why mention and only mention political events when you are talking about an iOS app and Apple store censorship ?

Or you're just merely talking about politics of your value.

ThePowerOfFuet• 3 years ago

Owned by state-backed Tencent and increasingly privacy invasive and censorship-driven, why does WeChat why does Apple let

Hmm.

Apple’s strict on App Store rules but gives WeChat a free pass (2020)

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