Apple Rejects App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/08/drone-app/

by mtgx • 14 years ago

273 221 14 years ago

wired.com

RexRollman• 14 years ago

Offending people's tender sensibilities should not be a reason to reject an app.

Steko13• 14 years ago

You build your billion dollar app store and you can run it the way you want.

ucee0543• 14 years ago

Every comment you have made on this page has been in reply to someone's criticism of the App store's horrid policy.

Every riposte you have given has been that Apple have the right to choose their policy.

Yes, Apple may have a right to have a horrid policy. But that doesn't make the policy any less horrid.

The horridness of the policy is the whole point. You have therefore missed the point every time, with every answer.

mike-cardwell2• 14 years ago

I can understand Apple wanting to keep its market place "clean", but at the very least, iDevice owners should be able to opt-in to seeing apps like this. Why can't it just be flagged "adult" or something, and you can then opt-in on your device to seeing apps flagged as such?

Why does Apple think it is suitable to make these decisions on your behalf, iDevice users? Are you happy with this?

Personally, I'll be sticking with my HTC device running Cyanogenmod.

DrJokepu• 14 years ago

I believe the following parts of the iOS App Store Review Guidelines answer your question:

* We have lots of kids downloading lots of apps, and parental controls don't work unless the parents set them up (many don't). So know that we're keeping an eye out for the kids.

* We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, "I'll know it when I see it". And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.

* This is a living document, and new apps presenting new questions may result in new rules at any time. Perhaps your app will trigger this.

* Lastly, we love this stuff too, and honor what you do. We're really trying our best to create the best platform in the world for you to express your talents and make a living too. If it sounds like we're control freaks, well, maybe it's because we're so committed to our users and making sure they have a quality experience with our products. Just like almost all of you are too.

roc2• 14 years ago

If they have a parental control feature, recognize that it's not usually turned on, so set app store policy assuming parental control isn't on, but that style of protection is desirable ... why don't they just default parental control to "on"? Or at least make it a device-setup-time prompt?

Of the "iOS' walled garden is anticonsumer" concerns - the one that's in regular demonstration is Apple's refusal to allow adults to indicate that they really are grown up enough to be exposed to content regarding politics, religion, war and, yeah, even sex.

mike-cardwell2• 14 years ago

None of that answers my question.

Why can't adults opt in to seeing adult apps?

There are literally hundreds of millions of non-iDevice smartphone users who don't live with these restrictions and who are not being harmed at all. Is there something special about iDevice users that means they need extra protection? Of course not.

jcromartie2• 14 years ago

The review guidelines have a surprisingly human tone to them.

sampsonjs• 14 years ago

I think I missed something. I'm pretty sure I knew what death was before I hit puberty. Does this app include photos of the result of the strikes? Is there supposed to be a "talk" you have with your kids around age 12 or 13 where you explain what drones are and reveal for the first time that there is a war in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

fab1an• 14 years ago

If parental control is truly the main issue, face detection algorithms that also assess your age could be a solution [1], but then again, it seems like Samsung is owning the patent for this [2]. Oops!

Sources: 1. http://www.sync-blog.com/sync/2012/04/how-old-do-you-look-fa...

2. http://www.google.com/patents/US8218080

woodsielord• 14 years ago

BS argument through and through.

1st* You need an Apple ID with a credit card to use the App Store. Ergo, adult work. Ergo, parental controls can be integrated into the credit card screen by the simple checkbox "Is the user of this account an adult?"

2nd* Supreme Court Justice is given the authority by the state to decide on immense matters after years of honorable (which is their title, by the way) service. Nice attempt at equating that with an app review team, whose job, according to an Apple employee, is to look "at things that may or may not be dcks all day long."

3rd Blabla.

4th* More blabla with qualifiers to look like one of us.

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

Wow, I thought you were joking and making it up. But it turns out these are actual store guidelines, and they are written in this style.

cageface9• 14 years ago

The mobile platform is looking more and more like the central computing platform of the next decade at least and it's way too important to allow one company's Romper Room sensibilities to determine what is and is not expressible in this new medium. I don't want to live in a digital Disneyworld.

"Protecting the children" is always the scoundrel's excuse for pushing censorship and control over the line of a sensible balance.

tripzilch7• 14 years ago

How do those last two points have anything to do with his question?

vvpan• 14 years ago

Well they do have iKamasutra in the app store, used to at least. A good app, by the way.

abecedarius• 14 years ago

Apparently it ran into inconsistent reviewing too: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/17/ikamasutra-a-tale-of-sex-lo...

Steko13• 14 years ago

"Why can't it just be flagged "adult" or something, and you can then opt-in on your device to seeing apps flagged as such?"

Presumably they think they will make more money by excluding those apps for now.

"Why does Apple think it is suitable to make these decisions on your behalf, iDevice users?"

Because that's the way stores work. The owner of the store decides what goods to sell in his store. A clothes designer has no guarantees that Neiman Marcus or Nordstrom's or Macy's or Walmart will carry any or all of their products.

"Are you happy with this?"

I'm happy the iOS app store is curated, yes.

sageikosa2• 14 years ago

Big Apple is watching [out for] you.

Rudism• 14 years ago

Thank you, Apple, for protecting me from a news aggregation/notification and mapping app like this one. I'll stick to my fart sound boards and purchasing currency for manipulative "games" with zero actual entertainment value any day!

rimantas• 14 years ago

Have you tried to submit a fart sound board lately? How was your success in doing so?

willk• 14 years ago

Your argument is invalid. The fart sound board market is pretty saturated, but there isn't any drone strike mapping apps.

myared• 14 years ago

The irony is that this news aggregator is being denied, yet someone could make a game called "Drone Wars" where you operate a drone on missions and Apple would have no problem with it.

gaunab• 14 years ago

Very true words, and this irony is what should really be the matter here. It's "objectionable content" to receive reports on death penalties issued by the US government, carried out by unmanned planes at some part of the world no one in the US really cares about? Well, yeah. Thanks, Apple, for keeping your sweet and "entertaining" app store clean of this ugly and objectionable thing called reality.

Tichy• 14 years ago

It's called freedom - freedom from objectionable things.

ktizo3• 14 years ago

Perhaps the coder could make a game, which invites you to play at flying each drone attack as each one gets reported in, with lots of american flags and funny voiced terrorists to kill. Call it "Patriot Death Force" and have a heavy metal sound track and stuff.

That would probably get through fine.

genwin3• 14 years ago

Love it. I suspect if the app was based on real data it'd be blocked. Apple would let you attack the same spots though.

eevilspock13• 14 years ago

I think iOS is better than Android. I support the idea of a walled garden in principle (as long as it isn't a monopoly, and in this case it isn't. People can choose Android or others).

But the free flow of honest information is fundamental to democracy. This is stupid and gutless editorial censorship on Apple's part (unless there's some detail about this story that I'm missing). I hope someone higher up sees this, reverses the decision, and clarifies their internal standards on this.

Fucking lame Apple! Shape the fuck up!

@Rudism: ditto.

AndrewDucker• 14 years ago

You support a walled garden, but not if it blocks information?

I'm sorry, but that's completely contradictory. The point of the wall is that it blocks things Apple don't approve of.

eevilspock13• 14 years ago

You can support an approach and also believe someone is doing it stupidly, or even unethically, all without being contradictory.

For example, do you support the right of a newspaper editor to pick and choose which letters to the editor get published? How about a restaurant's reserved "right to refuse service to anyone"? If you do, you still reserve the right in each of these cases to object to individual decisions, and to refuse patronage if an individual decision or a pattern of decisions offends you. All without contradicting yourself.

msorvig• 14 years ago

The ideal walled garden would be one that blocks spammy apps and malware - but not information. I think it's reasonable to support walled gardens in principle but be critical of some aspects of the Apple implementation.

_ea1k• 14 years ago

I support a walled garden, as long as there is always a door that I can open.

loceng3• 14 years ago

If you're in the U.S. or many other countries you aren't in an actual democracy anyway. 1 vote != 1 vote.

eevilspock13• 14 years ago

I voted up your comment, but can you give me an example of a country that is a democracy by your definition? What is your definition?

[Jeez louis... why did this comment get downvoted? Shees!]

lttlrck• 14 years ago

democracy is not as simple as 1 vote == 1 vote...

if you define "many other countries" as "all other democracies" your statement might be closer to the truth...

bostonpete• 14 years ago

I hate when people cling to this middle school notion that a republic is not a democracy. An indirect democracy is a form of democracy.

klawed2• 14 years ago

Apple has never stated that the purpose of the appstore is to support democracy. And I think it would be hard to argue that the availability of apps (or lack thereof) in Apple's store, which is not even close to a monopoly, has any impact on democracy. I think what's really going on here is that Apple wants to avoid providing apps that might be politically divisive.

EDIT: qualifying availability of apps as within Apples' App Store

mcantelon3• 14 years ago

>I think what's really going on here is that Apple wants to avoid providing apps that might be politically divisive.

That's called "censorship".

Apple's store has an impact on democracy because Apple is very influential and other companies are likely to imitate their policies. Lots of young people are getting exposed to Apple's flavor of personal computer so, to them, censorship of software will seem normal.

RobotCaleb2• 14 years ago

Why did you open with that sentence? Were you replying to someone or just trying to instigate an argument?

eevilspock13• 14 years ago

I was trying to show that even though I prefer Apple's product and even though I think the walled garden is a legitimate idea, I think in this instance (and many others) Apple is being stupid and cowardly.

Most people on HN, probably with good reason, assume that people take sides in a specific argument based on their Android-Apple loyalty.

[I don't distrust Apple's intent any more than I do any other profit-driven business (i.e. Google is included). Apple has many times owned up to their app rejection mistakes. See http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4454530]

elehack• 14 years ago

I think that this kind of abuse is an irresistable temptation of a walled garden. If the garden's curators don't succumb to it themselves, the single-point-of-pressure is too much of a temptation to would-be government or external private sector censors.

When dealing with situations like this, we have a couple options. We can accept walled gardens and hope that the gardeners are made of stern stuff and love freedom.

Or we can reject walled gardens and demand ecosystems in which this kind of blocking can't happen, not just won't.

I prefer worlds where it can't. Trusting that it won't is setting up for disappointment IMO.

mtgx2• 14 years ago

Exactly. Didn't some senator asked Apple to remove some app in the early days? When Apple acts like this with their store, it's almost irresistible for the Government to ask them to remove some other apps they don't like either.

Nicole060• 14 years ago

"I think iOS is better than Android."

That might've been true during the first few versions of Android but I don't think that's the case nowadays. I sold my iPad 2 and bought a Nexus 7 and I don't really miss anything. I certainly do NOT miss not being able to sideload software outside of an app store, or the lack of customization.

In fact I feel that the interface in Jelly Bean is an improvement over iOS in many ways. And it has stronger cloud support, I particularly like how it sync with my online, public Picasa galleries and the like.

Shivetya• 14 years ago

if you want the conspiracy side of this, wrong guy is in office.

thechut• 14 years ago

Build an Android version, I doubt that the Play Store will block the app. And if it does you can have it one of the 1- other available stores.

chmod775• 14 years ago

They don't block any apps. They just remove the ones that do not abide by the rules. Also Google is pretty liberal itself and likes free information (Well, they are a search engine. of course they do) and I do not think they would remove it even if it would say "And this is why democrats suck" in big-red letters on every report. You are free to use the app or to not use it. It's your decision in the end.

nachteilig• 14 years ago

I typically support Apple's app store limitations, but come _on_ guys. This is almost as silly as the Mark Fiore situation.

nuje• 14 years ago

Nice to know no iOS app can help out if some day drones start strafing my country (cue arab spring etc.)

lutusp3• 14 years ago

This is a tempest in a teapot. Obviously the same content could be placed on a Web page containing an incarnation of Google Maps, with an updated overlay containing publicly available data about air strikes. Then iPod/iDevice owners could simply launch a browser and visit the site for the latest data.

It's obvious from the article graphic that the app is using Google Maps to display its data, so hosting it in a Web page would produce the same outcome, even the same appearance.

Indeed, given the move to so-called cloud computing and the public nature of the data being displayed, that's a more obvious way to accomplish the program's role -- put it on the Web and publish the page's address.

scott_s2• 14 years ago

The creator stated push notifications as one of the main points of the application. Rather than being about getting raw information, this app is more about general awareness.

lutusp3• 14 years ago

An issue easily solved by the user pressing "Refresh" on a Web page, or the provider designing a page that refreshes itself at 30-second intervals, and avoiding this entire brouhaha.

If the app was something other than an obvious and trivial Google Maps incarnation, this might be different, and I am in no way excusing Apple's paternalistic behavior, but it isn't as though the content is being suppressed by their decision.

It's better overall if this is a Web page -- it lifts the restriction of being an iOS app, it opens the source to anyone with a working browser. It's a more robust solution to what seems to be a non-problem.

mc32• 14 years ago

What's more, this incident likely created more interest than they would have ever had -had this not been rejected. Not saying rejection was their anticipated motive, but in retrospect, it did give the data visibility. So, in that sense, it is a likely positive outcome for their purpose.

lutusp3• 14 years ago

Agreed -- and not unlike filmmakers who tune their film during editing to achieve an R rating, or better, who create some pre-release publicity around what rating the film should have.

rickmb2• 14 years ago

As an Apple fanboy, I've been able to rationalize everything Apple has done concerning the app-store up to now, even if I personally would have like to have seen a way more open and liberal approach. And the overblown anti-Apple FUD, using misplaced terms like "censorship" and "monopoly" whenever an app was thwarted by Apples opaque policies has made it easy to ignore the objections of detractors.

But I find it impossible to justify what is quite obviously a politically motivated rejection.

I still believe this is Apple's store, and they can admit and reject what they like. But if politics comes into it, than that changes my personal perspective on buying Apple products.

Just imagine if the subject would be "places that legalize gay marriage" instead of drone strikes. The only "objectionable" part of the drone strike app is that it may have a political agenda. That should never be grounds for rejection.

dlikhten• 14 years ago

Android FTW. I know this pops up constantly, but this is EXACTLY the reason I advocate for android. This sort of shit does not fly there. Apple has the ability to censor which even the government can't and worse is that it's fully legal.

I really wish people would take these stories as a sign that we need to focus on the android market.

FWIW: I am not advocating for the baby & bathwater argument. I think we must focus on android because it will put market pressure on apple to have a more fair/just approval process.

stephengillie2• 14 years ago

Even if both Google's and Amazon's app stores reject an app, there are still other markets. And you can just download APKs from websites/ftp/etc and install them to your android, no market required.

enraged_camel3• 14 years ago

While this is true, security is a massive concern. Just look at how many malicious apps were in the Android store just last year, vs. in the Apple store.

at-fates-hands• 14 years ago

I actually would've thought the MS Windows Phone App Store would be even more fertile ground. Not sure how stringent their policies are, but a quick Google search only turned up a rejected Twitter content scraping app which was rejected.

Not to mention if anybody needs more apps, its the Windows Phone App store.

lukeschlather• 14 years ago

This is not the first time that Apple has rejected an app on purely political grounds. This may be the first time they've removed something and offended liberal/libertarian sensibilities, but a couple clear examples from a while back:

http://mashable.com/2011/03/23/apple-removes-gay-cure/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/24/apple-manhattan-dec...

ktizo3• 14 years ago

Or rejecting apps by pulitzer prize winning political cartoonists for "Ridiculing Public Figures" - http://www.tuaw.com/2010/04/15/when-youre-good-enough-for-a-...

daten2• 14 years ago

There's also the "phone story" app that was intended to raise awareness of human rights abuses that go into manufacturing devices such as the iPhone itself.

http://phonestory.org/banned.html

"Phone Story was pulled from the iTunes App Store on Tuesday September 13 at 11.35am, only few hours after its official announcement."

rickmb2• 14 years ago

And this illustrates exactly why I haven't taken most of the attacks on Apple seriously up to now.

Hatred an bigotry aren't "purely political". The fact that certain sick fucks leverage those sentiment for political gain doesn't change that. You can ban apps that are hateful and bigoted for that reason only, without it being a political statement.

This is very different from the drone strike app, which is not objectionable in any way if you remove the political dimension.

ralfd2• 14 years ago

That said, why has simplistic stuff like this to be an App? You could implement that in an email newsletter, a Twitter account, an RSS feed. An old-fashioned web site.

> politically motivated rejection

Probably that is the reason. But when I first heard of that App I did think of "torture porn". You practically track the death of people. How is that App used? Imagine being at lunch and you get a new notification. What do you do with that kind of Information? Why do you want that? Certainly not to grief, because it would desensitize you. I imagine the people who would install it (and leave it installed) would be from the opposite side of the spectrum and militaristic nuts: "Hell yeah, another 7 terrorist brownies taken down!"

icarus127• 14 years ago

  How is that App used? Imagine being at launch and you get
  a new notification. What do you do with that kind of 
  Information? Why do you want that?

I for one would want that because we're so separated from our actions that even those of us who are appalled by it don't think about it daily. I say _our_ because we as a people could put the screws to our government if enough of us actually cared. As to what you do with it, I think the intent is to start a conversation then and there. Tell other people what just happened, tell them to install the app. If that happens enough times I think it might jar something loose in the social consciousness.

It sounds better than sticking my head in the sand and pretending it's not happening. As for being desensitized, are you serious? _That's_ your argument against raising awareness of drone strikes? We're already desensitized to the violence we perpetrate on others. It doesn't even make the news if it has to compete with the latest celebrity gossip.

thwest• 14 years ago

Stifling of political opinions by a media corporation is no less censorship than actions undertaken by a government. You can check the dictionary, there are plenty of non-governmental definitions.

fpgeek9• 14 years ago

This isn't the first time Apple's removed an app for political reasons:

http://techland.time.com/2011/03/23/apple-removes-ex-gay-con...

Now, I happen to agree with the politics in that case, but it also illustrates the broader point: A curated app store is inevitably entangled in politics. Approving an app can be just as political a decision as rejecting it.

grandalf• 14 years ago

I think it's important to be reasonable in cases like this and realize that companies willing to undertake censorship like this on behalf of government will surely (and happily) do things like install payloads on your device without permission. It's really a very small leap to expect this.

fleitz• 14 years ago

Helping nations keep track of progress through their crimes against humanity is more IBM's business.

Apple is merely interested in the fall from grace, not the accounting.

sageikosa2• 14 years ago

Any user base who would give up a little freedom for a little security, will end up with a platform-specific app store.

oofabz• 14 years ago

Actually killing people is "objectionable and crude". Telling people about it, in an attempt to stop further killings, is anything but.

nextstep• 14 years ago

"About two weeks later, on July 23, Apple told him was just too blah."

What is this supposed to say?

chimeracoder3• 14 years ago

I came here to see if anybody else noticed this too.

The only thing I can think of is an oversight by a lazy copy editor, just like the occasional [TK] that slips into print.

Though this is becoming increasingly rare, both because the [TK] notation is losing popularity, and because having copy editors at all is also losing popularity....

prodigal_erik• 14 years ago

Apple's dystopian system is working as designed. If you're going to take offense, let it be that they granted themselves the power to do this at all, not whether they got around to using it or for what. I just worry how many customers may not care what they opted into even if they knew.

wprater• 14 years ago

Whoa. Now Apple is providing censorship for our [corrupt] government. Sigh.

genwin3• 14 years ago

They go hand in hand, I'd say.

frusciante29• 14 years ago

I know people are getting killed in Afghanistan. Why would I want to know how many and when?

toomuchcoffee• 14 years ago

The Cupertino company says the content is “objectionable and crude,” according to Apple’s latest rejection letter.

"We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write F-U-C-K on their airplanes... because...? it's obscene!"

-- Colonel Walter E. Kurtz

spinchange• 14 years ago

Clearly not as desirable as just having the finished app approved, but a drones twitter account that posts every time the strike database is updated sounds like an itch worth scratching to me.

hcarvalhoalves• 14 years ago

Everything now is an app, distributed inside walled gardens. Censorship! Yay!

In other news: just make stuff like this as a mobile site.

thisischris• 14 years ago

This is a mobile site with a native wrapper- that's why it isn't allowed.

lukifer• 14 years ago

Mobile-wrapper apps are indeed allowed. This one was rejected specifically for "crude" content.

blazingfrog2• 14 years ago

Instead of calling this a political move, I'm wondering if they would allow an app that tracks murder victims across the US as they happen. My guess is that it would be rejected too for the same reasons, which are probably not political. This would simply be, as they said, crude. And IMHO, inappropriate.

lancewiggs2• 14 years ago

Or an app that tracks crime, classifiable by type? That would be useful. As would thus app be to many journalists. This is a slippery slope.

ars• 14 years ago

Would either side of the "national drone debate" (if there is such a thing) object to this app?

Those opposed to it would like to know what's happening.

Those in favor would like to see how effective it is.

I can't see either side objecting, so I agree with you that it's probably the fact that it's about death that is the reason they were rejected.

Tycho• 14 years ago

I can just imagine some bored senator turning an app like this into an indictment of how Apple supports anti-Americanism and dodges taxes.

Kerrick• 14 years ago

From the reddit comments -- I'm surprised nobody on Hacker News brought this up before reddit!

> Mobile app developer here... It was probably rejected because all it is is a web page wrapped in an app.

> > 2.12 Apps that are not very useful, are simply web sites bundled as apps, or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected

> Which this app clearly is. It's not even using the mapkit API. It's just a link to a web page.

cageface9• 14 years ago

Nope. As quoted directly in the article:

The Cupertino company says the content is “objectionable and crude,” according to Apple’s latest rejection letter.

enraged_camel3• 14 years ago

Unlike most of the posters in this thread, I don't think Apple's rejection of the app is political. Most likely, they want to protect themselves against future legal liability, since there is a risk that the US government (specifically the Department of Defense, or Department of Homeland Security) will question the legality of drone tracking programs if they haven't already.

wtracy• 14 years ago

This is a news aggregator. How can that be illegal in the US?

tripzilch7• 14 years ago

Interesting point, but if the US gov doesn't want that app in the app store, then Apple could just say "it wasn't us" instead of taking the heat.

tiglionabbit• 14 years ago

Is this information available on a web page somewhere?

antihero• 14 years ago

I think drone strikes are pretty fucking objectionable. Showing them on a map? Not so much.

nell• 14 years ago

What if this request was from the govt?

JohnnyBrown• 14 years ago

Apple is literally preventing lifesaving technology from being deployed into the world. Due to this politically-motivated decision, actual real live human beings are being denied a simple tool that could allow them to literally avoid death.

If we aren't civilized enough to distinguish between combatants and foreigners (is has been clearly shown that we are not), we could at least have the decency to give the spectators to our fireworks shows a warning.

greedo• 14 years ago

Hyperbole much? This isn't a realtime tracking app that shows a drone in flight as it launches a Hellfire missile towards someone on President Obama's hit list...

jrockway• 14 years ago

Meh, it should be a web app anyway.

nathan_long• 14 years ago

One more reason to develop for the open web instead of someone else's platform.

Create• 14 years ago

iOS privacy app returns as a web app

Bitdefender says that Apple removed the application, which previously was a paid product, from the iOS App Store in June, but hasn't given it a reason for doing so. A potential cause could have been that Clueful tried to auto-detect a user's installed iOS apps so it could then display information about them.

http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/iOS-privacy-app-r...

Apple Rejects App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes

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