
GreatFire is tracking Apple iOS applications for instances of censorship - feross
https://applecensorship.com/
======
feross
More context:
[https://mailchi.mp/greatfire/applecensorship](https://mailchi.mp/greatfire/applecensorship)

~~~
sm4rk0
This text (or link) should be on the site's homepage.

~~~
ptd
Which site are you referring to? Apple’s, Mailchimp, or something else?

~~~
cazum
I think they mean Applecensorship.com

~~~
sm4rk0
Yes.

------
amingilani
Please note that while Apple itself may censor applications in regions,
creators of the apps may choose to limit their distributions as well. For
example: Bank of America's mobile banking app isn't available in Pakistan
where I currently am, but this website wouldn't differentiate between that
type of censorship or Apple's censorship.

But, personally, I still think this is a great idea!

~~~
duskwuff
I would hesitate to call that "censorship" at all. Some apps simply aren't
relevant in a country because they're associated with a physical service which
doesn't exist there. For example, a number of food delivery apps (like Uber
Eats and Grubhub) don't operate in China, and as such have chosen to not make
their app available there.

~~~
lazyasciiart
And nobody ever leaves the country. Or if they do, they're totally willing to
go through the entire giant hassle of switching their account for a few days.

~~~
threeseed
Then take that up with the individual app developer.

It has nothing to do with Apple or censorship.

~~~
lazyasciiart
I was objecting to the statement that some apps are not relevant in those
countries.

------
RandallBrown
I'm not sure how this shows censorship. It just shows you if an app is
available in China.

Lots of apps aren't available in China or outside of where the developer is
based.

~~~
philwelch
It's also a really, really, really hard line to draw. Lots of countries have
laws and regulations that may require a company to withdraw apps from an app
store. If you had a Wolfenstein game in your app store, you'd have to "censor"
it in the German app store. China is especially censorious and authoritarian,
but your only options are (a) don't do business at all in an especially
censorious and authoritarian country, thereby censoring _all_ of the apps, or
(b) censor the apps the government wants you to censor, which is what you
already have to do in lots of other countries anyway.

~~~
judge2020
In this case, it isn't Apple censorship. But even if Apple was the one to pull
an app due to a country's local laws, we can't expect Apple to start refusing
removal requests when it threatens the app store (or worse, Apple products)
being banned in the entire country.

------
musicale
Isn't this just "Apple complies with local laws in China (etc.) requiring them
to remove VPN apps and hand over data belonging to political dissidents?"

Greatfire is right: Apple could indeed take a stand for freedom - if the
shareholders demanded it and and were willing to shut down Apple's iPhone
sales and manufacturing business, which is responsible for the bulk of Apple's
income and profits.

Google famously left China, but Google is more of an advertising company than
a hardware company.

~~~
fluffycat
Still I find it comical that people thinks Apple keeps the moral high ground.
I personally find Apples position disgusting and super hypocritical. Sure,
they are the white knight that keeps you safe from other monsters, only if you
avert your gaze from China. At least Google so far sticked to its decision,
and hopefully keeps it that way.

------
larrysalibra
As many have noted, you can't tell from this site whether apple decided to
remove an app from the China app store or the developer decided never offer it
in that coutnry. Because of that, it's not useful for calling out censorship.

We do know, however, that Apple does certain certain apps and functionality
_on device_ for China. Censorship of the News app is one such example:
[https://www.larrysalibra.com/how-apple-censors-news-in-
china](https://www.larrysalibra.com/how-apple-censors-news-in-china)

------
CharlesW
I don't understand how to use the site, but here's another good resource:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Apple](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Apple)

------
st3fan
This is not entirely accurate. It will also show apps missing in China that
the author has decided not to publish in that region.

------
bigmonads
Reminds me of Apple's censorship of US assassinations:
[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-
just...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/538kan/apple-just-banned-
the-app-that-tracks-us-drone-strikes-again)

There's a reason why centrally curated platforms are dangerous, and why Free
Software Principals reject them.

What's with the downvotes? More censorship?

~~~
rootusrootus
That app shows up in the app store. What changed?

~~~
bigmonads
It mentions it in the article. Supporters keep putting it back up and Apple
continuously takes it down (under pressure of the US gov).

For context, the app was created to track human rights abuses during the
disclosure of the US's covert surveillance and assassination program in the
Middle East. This was a scandal for the United States because it was disclosed
that they were killing innocent people with knowledge and through
reclassification, even killing children (internally using the terminology "fun
sized terrorists").

The pressure to remove the app was brought to Apple during a sweep to control
the scandal and public perception of the program.

(Given the public conversation has moves far past the scandal, and the Trump
administration continues the indiscriminate assassinations, that censorship
program does seem to have succeeded)

~~~
rootusrootus
Just speculation, but I wonder if Apple kicks it out simply because it is
controversial and very political, and they just don't want to deal with it.

It's also a fairly low-value proposition for a native app, in my opinion. It's
really the kind of content worthy of a web page, that's about it. Not sure
that contributes to Apple's vendetta against it, however.

~~~
bigmonads
If you read the reporting on the subject, you'll learn it is from government
pressure.

I agree with you, and think its endemic of the app ecosystem.

------
hhanesand
China commands such a massive market which makes it hard to rationalize
neglecting it, purely from a revenue standpoint. Going to be interesting to
see how Western companies respond to the continuing rise of authoritarian
policies in China, and whether or not it influences their business practices
outside of China.

------
emersonrsantos
It's politics, but I choose to not have my app distributed in China due to bot
hyperactivity ruining my metrics.

------
RickSanchez2600
Interesting I typed in Clash of Clans and found all of the Clash of Clans
clone games like Clash of Kings, etc. Only the Chinese App store had Chinese
letters in their name.

------
scarface74
I don’t get the purpose of “VPN apps” as opposed to just signing up for a VPN
service and setting it up in iOS settings.

~~~
dmix
That's silly. That's like wondering why people use awful streaming sites to
watch movies and not download high quality torrents instead.

Ease of use, easy of discovery, learning curves, etc.

~~~
scarface74
What’s hard about going into settings and then

General -> VPN -> add configuration and entering

\- Server

\- remote ID

\- Username

\- Password

This is less setup than adding an email account.

~~~
Elidrake24
Except an email account is something everyone has to use in the day to day,
and getting to that point was a 15 year battle. Go down and work with the IT
department sometime, it's incredible the blind spots you'll see. The calrity
of your knowledge is far from universal

~~~
scarface74
So who is the set of people who are both technically savvy enough to know they
want a VPN but can’t follow the set up instructions I listed above if they
were given by a VPN provider?

~~~
zapzupnz
People with enough technical knowledge to know that they need a VPN to evade
something like the Great Firewall, but not with enough technical knowledge to
set it up manually.

They may have heard of so-and-so app, install it, and boom, it works. That's
very appealing, especially if it's a custom protocol that is supposedly harder
to detect.

Or maybe their grandkids have set it up for them, and don't want it to be any
harder than it needs to be. Yada yada.

It's not really hard to come up with answers like this. The two options aren't
"complete expert" and "blithering idiot".

------
mrmondo
Isn't it Chinese censorship - as reflected by Apple App store in China vs USA?

~~~
etse
No, the tool allows you to compare availability against a number of countries
in addition to China.

------
intopieces
Will Apple allow their trademark to be used in this way? Or does it fall under
the “____ sucks” provision of free speech?

~~~
thaumasiotes
It falls under the "nominative use" defense to an assertion of trademark
infringement. Free speech has nothing to do with it.

Trademarks are intended to provide consumers with the confidence that the
products they're buying really come from the producer they claim to come from.
As such, you're prohibited from assembling your own computer and branding it
Apple; you've never been prohibited from referring to Apple.

~~~
joe_hoyle
It was my understanding that this doesn’t cover using a trademark in a domain
name. I could be wrong; my only experience of this is that “WordPress” is a
trademark, and therefore it’s generally accepted that any WordPress related
product is not allowed to use the trademark in their domains.

~~~
tonyztan
I am not a lawyer, but this 6th Circuit case might be relevant: Taubman v.
Webfeats.

"Even if [the] use is commercial, it must still lead to a likelihood of
confusion to be violative of the Lanham Act. 15 U.S.C. § 1114(1). In Planned
Parenthood, the defendant used the plaintiff's trade name as a domain name,
without the qualifying moniker 'sucks,' or any other such addendum to indicate
that the plaintiff was not the proprietor of the website. In contrast,
'taubmansucks.com' removes any confusion as to source. We find no possibility
of confusion and no Lanham Act violation."

[https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-6th-
circuit/1213191.html](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-6th-
circuit/1213191.html).

------
sneak
Great site.

Additionally, this doesn't show the endless number of apps that Apple censored
from _all_ countries' iOS app stores because they contained or might contain
images of human bodies.

It's not something the site can do, but it's important to remember that this
is just the tip of the iceberg: at least in China they are required by law to
block e.g. VPN apps; no such equivalent law requires them to ban apps that
contain nipples in the United States; that censorship is entirely voluntary.

~~~
zimpenfish
> ban apps that contain nipples in the United States; that censorship is
> entirely voluntary

Is that true? Because that would cut out the Tumblr, Imgur, Reddit, Flickr,
Twitter, etc. apps. And those are just the ones I can think of off the top of
my head.

~~~
sneak
I urge you to look into why the Reddit NSFW search looks and works the way it
does, and why Tumblr alienated their userbase this quarter. In both cases you
will find the root cause to be Apple app store policies.

Steve Jobs once famously cited iOS as having “freedom from porn”, and went on
to say that people would care more about it being blocked “when you have
kids”.

For being a California peacemonger, he missed out on big swaths of being a
hippie.

~~~
zimpenfish
> Tumblr [...] root cause to be Apple app store policies

No, that was almost certainly because of SESTA/FOSTA and was underway _well
before_ they had their child porn snafu that got them temporarily booted from
the App Store.

