Apple has updated its App Review Guidelines to expand the list of user-generated content experiences that can be removed from the App Store without notice. Here are the details.
Bad news for anonymous chat apps
Apple’s App Review Guidelines have an entire section dedicated to Safety. One of its sub-sections deals with apps with user-generated content, which the company acknowledges “present particular challenges, ranging from intellectual property infringement to anonymous bullying”.
To mitigate these issues, Apple requires such apps to follow certain rules, including providing mechanisms to report offensive content, and filter objectionable material.
In addition to this, Apple explicitly lists several apps with user-generated content that may be removed from the App Store without notice. That list already included categories such as apps being used primarily for pornographic content, making physical threats, and objectifying real people.
Today, Apple added “random or anonymous chat” apps to the list. Here’s the full, updated segment, from section 1.2 User-Generated Content:
Apps with user-generated content or services that end up being used primarily for pornographic content, Chatroulette-style experiences, random or anonymous chat, objectification of real people (e.g. “hot-or-not” voting), making physical threats, or bullying do not belong on the App Store and may be removed without notice.
To read Apple’s updated App Review Guidelines, follow this link.
9to5Mac’s take
It is not immediately clear what led Apple to add this specific language to the App Review Guidelines today, considering that the previous version of the document already mentioned “Chatroulette-style experiences”.
Last year, Apple and Google removed Chatroulette-style app OmeTV from the App Store and the Play Store, following a report from Australia’s eSafety Commissioner on how “anonymous random chat app platforms [were] putting children at risk.”
So it is perfectly possible that this is may part of Apple’s broader effort to protect minors, since anonymous chat apps tend to be popular among younger users and have been linked to cases of bullying and intimidation.
On the other hand, it is also possible that the new rule is related to apps such as bitchat, Jack Dorsey’s new anonymous peer-to-peer chat app, which has been widely used among protesters, particularly in Nepal, Iran, and Uganda.
In light of Apple’s recent ban of ICEBlock and similar apps used to report ICE activity, the company may be broadening its guidelines to give itself clearer leeway.
Last year, Apple was widely criticized for justifying those removals under the App Store’s “objectionable content” policy, so today’s addition may be Apple’s way of carving out a clearer rule to justify removing these apps going forward.
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