Google bans reddit client from Play Store for "sexually explicit material"

http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/r3dhg/reddit_is_fun_banned_for_sexually_explicit/

by veeti • 14 years ago

144 88 14 years ago

stevejabs• 14 years ago

Looks like Android users are going to start losing one of their "talking points" if this is going to become a trend in the Google Marketplace.

Instead of making the choice to crack down on sexual content I wish they would instead focus on getting ICS onto more handsets, cracking down on carriers / manufactures modifying device OS, and bouncing malware apps.

pyre2• 14 years ago

Well, one of the "talking points" is that Google Marketplace isn't the only way to install apps. If Google goes this route, someone else can create an app market that competes. With Apple, you're stuck with what they spoon-feed you (unless you're successful enough to launch a PR campaign against them that works in getting them to back down).

technomancy2• 14 years ago

The point of Android isn't that Google's Marketplace is better, it's that Google's Marketplace is non-exclusive. This is a textbook example of why being locked into a single source of applications is such a horrible idea.

huggyface• 14 years ago

Looks like Android users are going to start losing one of their "talking points"

It is? One of the biggest complaints about the Android Market by many Android advocates is that it is too much of a Wild West, and that it very strongly needs more control.

There is a medium somewhere between no control and complete control that is a nice mix, especially if you have to option of opting out of the control structure if you don't want it: If you want what the market doesn't have you are totally free to install any number of alternative markets, if not installing directly from third parties.

gitarr• 14 years ago

Why is the US such a prude country?

They show people blowing their head off with a gun in the afternoon news while children are watching, but omg, a boob or even worse a nipple they go crazy!

This ban has to be taken back, or all other means to browse reddit must be banned as well, including all google browsers, etc. I see a lawsuit coming otherwise.

pohl• 14 years ago

This ban has to be taken back, or all other means to browse reddit must be banned as well, including all google browsers, etc.

I don't understand your reasoning here. When a store decides to not devote shelf space to an item, they are in no way trying to prevent you from going to another store that carries it. My local grocer does not carry tomatillos, but they're not going to sue me if I get them elsewhere.

pyre2• 14 years ago

  > they're not going to sue me if I get them elsewhere.

But that's a potential sale lost. You're stealing that potential revenue from your local grocer and deserve to be punished!

darklajid• 14 years ago

The analogy is crap.

Let me make it worse: You're the only store around for miles and miles and people really just buy what you've got in stock. Sure, they could order online or grow something in their backyards. Maybe there's this obscure and small outlet for some of the missing things from your inventory, but most customers don't know the place.

But you just decided to remove meat from your store now. You consider eating meat distasteful and barbaric and really want to have nothing to do with that sort of stuff.

In my book you'd be

- abusive in your position as a quasi-monopoly

- an asshole by forcing your morale standards on others

I think that's a good point the GP makes. I don't give a damn what the weirdo moral limits are in the US. They are totally insane if you have my upbringing.

If you want to police the market, add proper age restrictions. Or use this braindead misfeature of regional support and don't allow apps like this in the US (now that would be a change, eh?).

jdminhbg• 14 years ago

"They show people blowing their head off with a gun in the afternoon news while children are watching"

Do you actually think this is a true statement about the US?

onemoreact• 14 years ago

I have seen people killed on the evening news before. Granted I don't recall anyone using a gun to 'blow their own brains out', but if they will show: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Douglas_Wells the limitation is simply is it news.

noarchy2• 14 years ago

It has been a long time, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Budd_Dwyer

That incident alone doesn't mean that this is happening often, because it isn't. Violence is shown on US television all the time, but it is almost always of the fictional variety.

muuh-gnu• 14 years ago

> They show people blowing their head off with a gun in the afternoon news while children are watching, but omg, a boob or even worse a nipple they go crazy!

http://i.imgur.com/SRa6U.png

bh422223• 14 years ago

It's just how the US is.

I was watching a very violent move, late at night, on a cable channel. All kinds of violence - no problem.

Suddenly an inured woman is being given first aid, in the process one nipple falls out of her shirt briefly - GIANT blur.

The root causes for this pro-violence/anti-sex culture could be interesting for sociology researches.

sp3324• 14 years ago

That's a little different though. The blood in that movie was fantasy. The nipple was real.

Pewpewarrows2• 14 years ago

For any curious devs: the distinction between this and the reason why web browsers (like Chrome, Dolphin, or Firefox) aren't banned, according to Google at least, is direct linking. An app is allowed to "browse" to NSFW material, but cannot explicitly link (or come pre-loaded with favorites or bookmarks) to said material.

That said, this is still an awful and draconian policy. I wouldn't have batted an eyelash if this was a news story coming from Apple's App Store, because that's just par for the course in their ecosystem. I love what Android used to stand for, but lately I'm finding it harder to stand by my principles, with Apple providing a very enticing walled garden that's getting harder to avoid.

nkohari2• 14 years ago

Except multiple Reddit clients exist for iOS, and have for years.

chrisrhoden• 14 years ago

And none of them link directly to NSFW reddits.

1880• 14 years ago

From the comments: tapping the top icon from the landing page takes you to a pretty full list of subreddits including NSFW ones

joelhaasnoot• 14 years ago

Note that this changed recently: an upgrade was recently pushed through that made this change. The list used to be a list of 10 or so subreddits, but now the list has been expanded to include the top 30-50 or so reddits I think, including all the NSFW ones.

You could get to NSFW subreddits in the older version but had to know the name.

bsphil• 14 years ago

4chan browsers (chandroid, yon, etc) all include links to NSFW boards in their main list, and those are all available on Google Play. I think they're just being very selective about applying their policy, probably not on purpose either.

apike• 14 years ago

An app is allowed to "browse" to NSFW material, but cannot explicitly link (or come pre-loaded with favorites or bookmarks) to said material.

We sell a Reddit image-browsing client on the iOS App Store (http://steamclocksw.com/prism/) and hit this in v1.0. We assumed that our 18+ rating for being able to browse to NSFW material meant we'd get some leeway, but we were initially rejected for including the "prettygirls" Reddit, which consists of fully clothed photos of adult women.

kamechan• 14 years ago

i can make a bookmark to a NSFW site with the browser that's provided in android. how is that not direct linking?

Urgo4• 14 years ago

I don't have any sexually explicit apps on my phone, I don't care to download any, and I don't even care to have a reddit app (I don't use the site) but the lack of censorship in the android marketplace was always the biggest reason I supported Android. Yes its true you can get apps from other sources but you shouldn't have to. I opposed the need for the amazon app store for example. Anyway this really makes me sad that google feels the need to start filtering for any reason other then malware. I've been a huge android supporter over the past few years, and this in no way is making me get an iphone, but if they continue down on this path I don't know if I'll follow in the future.

moultano• 14 years ago

Thankfully though, you can still always download the app directly from the creator without needing to do anything complicated to your device.

Urgo4• 14 years ago

But then you lose things like the ability for it to auto update when the marketplace err play store detects a new version.

Also I was doing some research on the app creator and whats funny is it looks like a couple years ago google even sent the creator a free nexus one for making the first version of this app. lol.

_ea1k• 14 years ago

> I opposed the need for the amazon app store for example.

I understand what you are saying, but I believe the reasoning applies more directly to other markets (eg, slideme). I don't think that the Amazon App store exists due to restrictive Google policies, but rather due to Amazon's desires to directly enter this market (cf, Kindle Fire).

Urgo4• 14 years ago

I've been using smart phones since the treo, and used palm devices since around 1999/2000. Since I've lived through all of that I can really appreciate a single source to get everything, manage updates, etc as long as that source is fair and unbiased. That is why I didn't like when amazon launched their own store for android apps. It added a second store you had to run to update apps, and segregated the market, etc. If google keeps heading down this path though I will support a open 3rd party marketplace.

pbhjpbhj9• 14 years ago

>the lack of censorship in the android marketplace was always the biggest reason I supported Android //

So you support Android only as far as they allow the undesired exposure of users to hardcore porn or shock imagery? That seems a very strange line to take.

bad_user• 14 years ago

Speaking for myself, yes, I support Android as long as they allow hardcore porn or shock imagery.

This is not because I want to watch those things (although I do occasionally), but because otherwise it means I'm losing the freedom to do that. And first it's porn, but what's next? Political oppinions? Google's competition?

I'm so dissapointed.

Urgo4• 14 years ago

They have content filtering settings in the market.

[x] everyone

[x] low maturity

[x] medium maturity

[x] high maturity

[x] show all apps

With settings like that where the device owner can pick what they want to see why block anything.

tvon3• 14 years ago

So they don't want to promote it in the Android Market, but you can still install it from other sources, can't you?

I mean, wouldn't a curated collection in "Play Store" (or whatever it's called) along with the option to download outside apps be the best of both worlds?

ajross3• 14 years ago

Yes, you can always install a .apk file directly via download, though there are a few steps to the process (turn on "developer mode" or whatever, then find the unassociated downloaded file and launch it). Amazon seems to be making it work with their market app though, so it's probably not insurmountable.

But no, I wouldn't consider that a "best" of the two worlds. Adult sites like reddit mix "clean" content and NSFW stuff all the time, and dumping them in an unsupported bin isn't likely to make anyone happy. If there's a curation step, there also needs to be a opt-in for people who don't mind the occasional nudity with their geek news.

pbhjpbhj9• 14 years ago

>opt-in for people who don't mind the occasional nudity //

This sounds like a fanboy-like purposed miscategorisation. Reddit links to hardcore pornography (and mirrors it in thumbnail form) and has until very recently carried Child pornography. It is also a hub for extreme NSFL shock imagery.

You can argue that someone should provide a repository for Android apps that allow access to such things but I don't think you can fairly expect any particular company to put their name to promotion of that sort of content. Any company that wishes to remain with an appearance of respectability would probably do well to keep a large distance between themselves and reddit (and probably 4chan from what I've heard but I'm not that familiar with it - I've visited a couple of times and what I found was relatively tame compared to what I've seen on reddit, YMMV).

>'reddit is fun banned for "sexually explicit material"'

That sounds like the correct analysis to me.

georgemcbay3• 14 years ago

The march towards being a half-assed Apple continues.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3700731

The disappointment continues as well.

I never would have thought replacing Eric Schmidt as CEO was a bad thing, and I'm sure there are more factors at play here than just that, but I can trace my waning support of Google to a pretty specific time that happens to coincide with Page taking the CEO spot.

w1ntermute2• 14 years ago

And this is where the strength of Android shows. Just download and install the APK: https://github.com/talklittle/reddit-is-fun/downloads

And if this keeps up, someone will just make an alternate market.

cma• 14 years ago

There are already tons of alternate markets, including one run by Amazon...

georgemcbay3• 14 years ago

You can jailbreak an iOS device and install whatever you want as well, that doesn't change the fact that Apple makes ridiculous decisions about what can and can't appear on the app store.

My problem with this decision isn't that it makes it impossible for me to install this one app, but rather that it looks very much like the path towards where Apple is, where maybe I have to install a custom Cyanogenmod build on my Android phone just to have the option to install non-'Play' APKs (this isn't the situation now, but I can much more easily see this happening today than I could a year ago).

ZeroGravitas• 14 years ago

Since it's open source* it's already available in the F-droid repository (which in this context would be called a Market, if it weren't all free):

F-droid installer: https://f-droid.org/FDroid.apk

Web link to RIF http://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdfilter=reddit%20is%2...

* I'm currently using Diode which is a fork of the older RIF app.

Alex3917• 14 years ago

It's amazing how fast Google has gone from having arguably the most respected brand in America to having a brand that stands for almost nothing. However, this has been something that's been at least five years coming so I don't think it's necessarily fair to blame it on Page taking over.

bostonvaulter2• 14 years ago

This seems like a great place to plug f-droid which is basically an Android "market" of all open-source apps that they compile themselves. Download reddit is fun from f-droid here:

http://f-droid.org/repository/browse/?fdid=com.andrewshu.and...

benihana• 14 years ago

...Redditors find some way to blame Apple and "hipsters"

jballanc• 14 years ago

In some ways, I wish this was a case of a company enforcing its own morals. Chick-fil-a is closed on Sundays. Fine. I don't eat there. Enough people do to keep them open. Great.

The thing about morals, though, is that everyone can have their own view. Taco Bell is open on Sundays. So is McDonalds, Burger King, and literally thousands of other restaurants. So why should I care that Chick-fil-a is closed?

No, I think this is about litigation. That's a lot more troubling because all companies (at least those based in the US) are subject to the same threats of litigation. Obviously, laws are based on morals, but ideally laws are based on the union of a population's morals, not the intersection.

This does not bode well for America.

javert2• 14 years ago

Obviously, laws are based on morals

I think that's an astute observation... probably not obvious to most people.

ideally laws are based on the union of a population's morals, not the intersection

Did you mean this the other way around? The union of my morals and those of Chick-fil-a would mean I can't work on Sunday. The intersection is probably more like, don't initiate force against others.

gcb• 14 years ago

They should remove gmail as well. I get some crazy things via that app

And it goes direct to my notification bar. talk about direct linking

Google bans reddit client from Play Store for "sexually explicit material"

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