Apple has updated its app review guidelines to expand the list of user experience content 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 security. One of its subsections deals with user-generated content apps, which the company acknowledges “present particular challenges, from intellectual property infringement to anonymous bullying.”
To mitigate these issues, Apple requires such apps to follow certain rules, including providing mechanisms for reporting offensive content and filtering objectionable material.
In addition, Apple specifically lists several apps with user-generated content that may be removed from the App Store without notice. This list already included categories such as apps used primarily for pornographic content, physical threats, and objectification of real people.
Apple added “random or anonymous chat” apps to the list today. 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 (such as “hot or not” voting), physical threats or bullying do not belong in the App Store and may be removed without notice.
To read Apple’s updated app review guidelines, click this link.
9to5Mac
It’s not immediately clear what led Apple to add this specific language to the app review guidelines today, given that a previous version of the document already mentioned “Chatroulette-style experiences.”
Last year, Apple and Google removed the Chatroulette-style app OmeTV from the App Store and Play Store following a report by the Australian eSafety Commissioner about how “anonymous platforms of random chat apps (were putting children at risk).
So it’s entirely possible that this could be part of Apple’s broader efforts to protect minors, as anonymous chat apps tend to be popular with younger users and have been linked to incidents of bullying and intimidation.
On the other hand, it’s also possible that the new rule is related to apps like bitchat, Jack Dorsey’s new anonymous peer-to-peer chat app that has been widely used among protesters, especially in Nepal, Iran and Uganda.
In light of Apple’s recent ban on ICEBlock and similar apps used to report ICE activity, the company may expand its guidelines to give itself more clarity.
Last year, Apple was widely criticized for justifying these removals under the App Store’s “unwanted content” policy, so today’s addition may be Apple’s way of developing a clearer rule to justify future removals of these apps.
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