Markets

Under Pressure, Apple Censors Sexual Content From Apps Store

By David Weir

Updated on: February 22, 2010 / 4:47 PM EST / MoneyWatch

In a controversial move, Apple has been purging sexually-explicit and other adult-themed apps from its iTunes App Store recently. The company is acting under pressure from some customers as well as from developers, who complain that such content has reached spam-type levels.

According to a report in Information Week, "the volume of sexually-themed apps, which can represent as many as a third of the apps in certain iTunes App Store categories... ends up making other apps less discoverable."
Developers have been using bug reports to bring pressure on Apple. Although the company does not publish its bugs, the ever-useful Open Radar does.

For example, I discovered several reports, one of which was filed recently by Eric Vitiello:

Regardless of parental control ratings, 17+ rated apps show up when casually browsing the app store. Unlike music and movies, these apps typically have icons, names and screenshots that border on obscene just by themselves. It's gotten so bad that it's actually not possible to allow a typical young child to browse the app store by themselves without them being assaulted by various boob/softcore porn apps.
The apps that are clearly "adult in nature" should either be forced into a separate "Red Light District" category, or they should be hidden when parental controls are enabled.
I specify "Adult in nature" here because clearly, apps that simply allow internet access (for example Twitter clients) should NOT be placed into this "Red Light District". This is plain common sense here. What we're talking about is apps like "Abnormally Big Boobs" and "Asian Schoolgirls" and so on.
The point here is to stop the polluting of categories like Lifestyle, Entertainment, etc with these apps that clearly don't belong there.
Of the solutions proposed above, I feel a "Red Light District" category as well as the ability to restrict access to it would be ideal.

Of course, Apple is treading into dangerous territory here. What is inappropriate content to one user is outrageous censorship to another.

For now, the company is remaining pretty tight-lipped about the issue. In a statement emailed to Information Week, Apple simply stated: "If we find these apps contain inappropriate material we remove them and request the developer make any necessary changes in order to be distributed by Apple."
image: webpages.scu.edu