Apple Has a New Porn Problem 136
adeelarshad82 writes "Twitter's new iOS-only app, Vine, was prominently featured by Apple as an 'Editor's Pick' in its App Store the day it launched. However, given Apple's policies for adult content, they may have rushed the whole thing since this past Sunday, a number of news outlets ran stories covering the rise of easily-accessible pornography on the new video sharing app. As Joshua Topolsky explains, the situation draws even more attention to the vague and sometimes confusing rules of Apple's App Store guidelines, and more clearly showcases the sporadic and often unusual criteria the iPhone-maker uses to decide the fates of applications. So it will be interesting to see how Apple handles this given that they've never been shy about banning similarly racy apps in the past."
Lock in and Consumerism (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple loves Twitter. It's 140-char limit and mentality (following celebrity and names rather than participating or creating) really encourages the kind of consumer thinking Apple depends on. I predict that they won't ban, they'll put pressure on Vine to remove adult content.
Hmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps the author of TFA is unaware of the fact that iDevices all come with web browsers, which can show porn easily?
It is a problem... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Lock in and Consumerism (Score:1, Insightful)
Porn is not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
It is people who think porn is a problem which is the problem.
Re:Porn is not a problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Porn can be a problem because of how deeply erotic responses hook into quadruped brains. The wrong porn in the wrong circumstances can create a mess in a brain. However, censorship is a terrible way to approach the problem.
Re:It is a problem... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple hasn't figured out how to get people to sign up for porn using their (known to spouse) iTunes accounts, which means they can't get their 30%. That's their porn problem.
Apple did, however, figure out that banning porn apps is an easy way to score brownie-points with parents associations and christian conservative morality campaigners without pissing off their porn consuming customers who access porn via a web browser in privacy mode anyway and remain completely unaffected by the ban... and Apple can't tax porn downloaded via Safari now can it. Also most people don't want want to advertise the fact that they are porn consumers by having a porn app on their phone so banning porn apps probably isn't hurting Apple's bottom line all that much. This ban on porn apps is a complete joke, but it helps to sell their iDevices and anybody who still fears that their kids might download porn on their phone can ask their telco to put a content filter on their kids' mobile account while resting easy in the knowledge they can't bypass that barrier by downloading a porn app. Meanwhile vendors of encryption protected file storage apps are making brisk business (no prizes for guessing what drives a lot of those sales) and Apple is levying a 30% cut on ever one of them. So Apple has found a way to appease the conservatives while still finding a way to profit off of people's need to hide browser downloaded porn... genius.
Re:Just more wanna-be "mommy" behavior (Score:5, Insightful)
In a cafe, people are forced to read what's on the bulletin board - it's in their face. For an app, you have to choose to download it and watch it. Ergo false analogy since your soccer moms will then have to explicitly download the porn. After which they can't complain.
What Apple is saying is...well I don't know what they're saying other than "We don't want to give you the choice to explicitly watch porn if you choose".
Re:Lock in and Consumerism (Score:2, Insightful)
"Just because you don't understand how to make your own tweets" - duh. In terms of intellect, making a tweet is like making a fart compared to the websites I've made that are at no1 for their subject (try timber recycling sometime) with content easily managed by non-techie staff.
Just because your average level of communication is so shallow that Twitter's 140 chars is an appropriate venue for you and your ilk, doesn't mean the rest of the world has to like it, and the way it offers people who MIGHT have more to say an easy way of saying nothing after all... and forces on the rest a flood of gossip and crap from "popular" people that drowns out anything important they might have to say anyway, makes Twitter a rather negative communications medium overall.
tl;dr: It dumbs us down, and encourages "sheep" mentality. Don't use it, don't be a sucker.
Hardly a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
First off Mobile Safari and all the other reskins(the other iOS browsers). A huge chunk of internet porn is perfect visible by just having a browser. And with the adoption of HTML5 in the next few years, I'd go as far as saying 99% of the porn will be visible by just having a web browser(even with a gimped javascript engine on iOS). If Apple was really serious about porn, they wouldn't have a browser in first place. Or maybe they'd use something like Opera mini, that goes through their server, gets censored, and then goes to the client device. The only porn that I don't think will be visible using a browser are a few Japanese 3D erogames(the visual novels can be done using HTML5. actually I'm surprised they haven't done so yet)
Then there is also offline viewing. iOS may not have file managers and it's codec selecting is limited, but its more than enough to view a video/pics uploaded uploaded through iTunes.
The apps. Apple policies are BS. DeviantArt is filled with artistic nudes, softcore porn and furry and it has multiple apps on itunes. Pixiv(japanese deviantart like site) is about 30% hardcore hentai porn and it has apps as well. Reddit and its japanese great grand father 2ch have several native clients for iOS, and they are filled with porn. Twitter already had links to porn and its integrated on iOS. It's not very hard to find youtube videos with some nudity or obscene language and there is an app for that. The only popular website with NSFW content that seems to be banned from the Appstore is 4chan.
Finally, the hypocrisy: their music and video stores have tons of potentially offensive content(not just nudity and sexual terms) that would be banned from the AppStore right off the bat. Never really understood the fuss about the apps.
Re:Porn is not a problem (Score:4, Insightful)
Porn is a substitute for our natural insticts which are to pretty much have sex all the time. It is rather important we manage those instincts. To better know why, it would help to recognize where we came from. And I'm not talking about "adam and eve." For many, it helps to achieve that chemical balance we need to remain... for lack of a better word, balanced in life.
I love it when people bring up children as if children are harmed by learning about their curiosities... curiosities driven by instincts they don't understand. Children aren't harmed by porn. They are harmed by lack of parental interest and guidance.