
“Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics” - donohoe
https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/
======
kerng
I totally agree with this!

I built a game and naively added ads to it as it seemed a good way to
monetize. The game started to be really liked, and had 300k+ downloads
overall. Many kids started playing it also.

Luckily I realized quickly that kids play on the devices of parents and so the
ads they might see are at times super inappropriate!

Then I removed all ads, I'd rather make less money but have people play and
have a good time. Its not always about money. At times I get contacted by
players, how they love the game and how it has been part of their childhood
etc. Some very moving messages, worth more then a few additional bucks from
ads and I feel much better because players aren't exposed to random ads,
pictures and messages.

The learning for me was that I will never work on anything that uses ads as
source of income, this includes turning down jobs at Google and Facebook.

~~~
TheCapn
Do you morally disagree with advertising/tracking monetization as a whole or
just those particularly geared towards vulnerable populations? (children in
your instance)

I have my professional job developing software solutions for clients on a
contractual base, but for a period after I graduated university I dabbled in
mobile development and made the decision during that time that I'd never bloat
my crappy apps with ads or tracking. I can't particularly articulate why I'm
against that business method as a whole, but something always felt wrong in
subjecting people to tracking/advertisements for my own monetary gain... if
I'm not producing something worth paying outright for then I'm not going to
skim pennies off the privacy of my users.

~~~
derekp7
I can give you my feelings towards this topic. Personally, I don't mind ads
that inform me of the existence of a product that I may be interested in,
where it tells me how it can solve my problems.

What I don't like is ads that use psychological devices to try to get me to
buy their product. I also don't like ads that are a distraction of the content
I'm trying to consume. So when playing a game, if the ad scroll at the bottom
of the screen is flashy, I can't easily play that game so I give up. Now an ad
that shows on a loading screen may be more acceptable, as long as the contents
of the ad aren't something that would get me fired if someone at work sees it.

I also hate that ads have to have their own javascript in it. The ad networks
should provide a safe canned set of functions that they control, and not serve
up anything that an ad customer submits.

Finally, if I'm already doing research for something (such as browsing through
the Bose headphones site), I don't want to see ads for those same headphones
that I already researched, following me around on all the web pages I visit.
It just really feels like someone is stalking me. Or look through a site like
rvtrader, then when you look up the weather the next day you see a bunch of
camper ads. Again, stalking. It's gotten to the point where I constantly
browse in a private browsing tab (yes, there are ways they can still track me,
but they aren't as obvious about it).

~~~
renlo
The distraction aspect is what really gets to me; cancelled my NYTimes
subscription after these bright red / orange advertisements loaded all over
the page, where the content I was interested in was the bland black text over
white background. Couldn't even read the headlines without naturally focusing
on the bright red advertisements.

~~~
gryz
So, do they really have the same ads as you could see without subscription?

~~~
tylerhou
Yes, WSJ too

------
joshstrange
Here is the whole section

> 1.3 Kids Category

> The Kids Category is a great way for people to easily find apps that are
> designed for children. If you want to participate in the Kids Category, you
> should focus on creating a great experience specifically for younger users.
> These apps must not include links out of the app, purchasing opportunities,
> or other distractions to kids unless reserved for a designated area behind a
> parental gate. Keep in mind that once customers expect your app to follow
> the Kids Category requirements, it will need to continue to meet these
> guidelines in subsequent updates, even if you decide to deselect the
> category. Learn more about parental gates.

> Apps in the Kids Category may not include third-party advertising or
> analytics. You should also pay particular attention to privacy laws around
> the world relating to the collection of data from children online. Be sure
> to review the Privacy section of these guidelines for more information.

It appears to only apply to apps in the "Kids Category" so Candy Crush and the
like can just say they are "adult"/not-kid-games and continue to be used by
kids (while showing them ads and tracking them).

~~~
criddell
Why do they ban third-party advertising in particular? It seems like
advertising should be allowed as long as it's display only with no outward
information flow. Basically ads equivalent OTA television or magazine ads
should be allowed.

~~~
mithr
In general, I believe it's based on the belief that children in partiular
don't yet have the necessary mental tools to be able to properly analyze
content -- basically, that they're influenced by media to a much higher degree
than adults.

> Basically ads equivalent OTA television or magazine ads should be allowed

I would guess that proponents of this approach also feel that the contents of
TV/magazine ads should be strictly controlled (and probably they are -- I'm
not sure what the exact regulations around these are, but I am sure it's much
harder to publish a blatantly misleading magazine or TV ad, without
consequences to the advertiser or the network/magazine, than it is to publish
one online).

~~~
snek
Not just a belief, it's been studied many times, and it is in fact illegal to
have "native" advertising on children's TV shows, at least in the U.S.

~~~
scarface74
Almost all cartoons aimed at kids hope to make money on related merchandise. A
lot of animated shows were cancelled because while the ratings were good, they
skewed toward older teens and adults that didn't buy toys. Two that come to
mind are "Young Justice" and the original "Teen Titans". Cartoon Network
specifically made "Teen Titans Go!" to skew younger.

This isn't a new thing, they killed off most of the Transformers in the 80s
movie so they could introduce a new line of characters/toys.

------
move-on-by
So far the only kids apps I've used with my little one is 'Sesame Street' and
'PBS Kids Video'. He loves Elmo, and its very handy in the pediatrician's
waiting room to have a distraction.

I also run a PiHole, and to my displeasure, I've found both these apps use
Google Analytics. PBS Kids Video goes a few steps further and uses Google
AdWords as well as ScorecardResearch analytics. These publicly funded apps are
siphoning data about me and my little one off to 3rd parties. The 3rd paries
might not be able to use that data for targeted advertising within the app,
but make no mistake that the data is still used to 'enrich' my shadow
profiles. I am very excited about these changes from Apple and I hope that
they are able to enforce them. I've written both of the apps support emails in
the past about the analytics and never received a response.

I've also heard of a popular BBC kids app called CBeebies. Last time I ran it
on my iPhone, it reached out to Facebook, Localytics, Branch.io, Google
Analytics, app-measurement.com, and onesignal.com

~~~
penagwin
I dislike tracking as much as anyone, but can you really fault them for using
Google analytics? It's not like PBS choose to use them "to profit off the
viewers".

~~~
stevenwoo
I have a stupid question, why don't they use something like Matomo instead?

~~~
rchaud
GA today is much more than just pageview analytics. With something like Google
Tag Manager, you can have non-technical staff add in event tracking for stuff
like form completion or file downloads, without needing to get developers
involved. Reporting for stakeholders is also robust because of its integration
with Google Data Studio, Google Sheets and other related tools.

Ultimately though, GA wins because these organizations outsource web
development and digital marketing work to agencies or contractors, and they
are the ones that make the tooling decisions. GA is a known quantity, so even
if their contract isn't renewed, a new agency will be able to take over the
account fairly frictionlessly.

And there are more contractors that are GA-focused than there are for Matomo,
and that's important when you're tasked with shopping around for agencies.

------
CountHackulus
Dropping adds seems good to me, but dropping analytics doesn't seem great from
a game dev perspective. New features and game balance is often driven by
analytics data. For example, if no one's using a certain feature in the game
then maybe it needs more attention brought to it or maybe attention won't be
focused on it for the next update.

I understand that there's a fine line between game analytics and farming PII
but I think it's an important line. I'm sad to see Apple forcing you to use a
first-party analytics solution. Smaller indie devs often won't have the time
to set up their own data pipeline and depend on things like Unity Analytics or
Flurry to help them do data analysis.

~~~
dsjoerg
I guess I should start a service that provides small indie devs with "first
party" analytics. I provide the software, it runs on a server dedicated to
you, your data is separate from anyone else's. That's first-party, right? But
I suppose I would have to charge 3x more for that than Amplitude does.

~~~
itake
There are a few OSS projects that do this. I am not sure how well they
integrate with mobile apps though.

[https://matomo.org/](https://matomo.org/)

------
panpanna
Google please steal this idea.

Edit: current policy is

"Ads in your app that are served to children need to be appropriate and served
from an ads network that has certified compliance with our families policies."

See [https://android-
developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/building-s...](https://android-
developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/building-safer-google-play-for-kids.html)

~~~
duxup
Considering the state of the play store and such ... probably nobody is paying
attention.

~~~
panpanna
A year ago I would have agreed but a lot has happened lately.

Play store went from 3.2m to 2.6m apps last year. When it comes to rejecting
apps that violate their tos they are pretty trigger happy.

~~~
duxup
I feel like they're trigger happy... but via automation and scripts that I'm
not sure are getting that much.

Like the volume is down, but for all I know it's just the same actors getting
the same stuff out there.

It's really hard to tell.

~~~
panpanna
I thick they are starting to do some good.

For what it's worth, Apple QA is also mostly automated.

~~~
duxup
It would be interesting to know how Apple's automation works as the impression
(may not be accurate) is their approval or denying is a bit more precise.

------
the_unknown
As a parent of 3 children and owner of multiple iPads and Android devices
(including a kids edition Fire Tablet) this really strikes a chord with me. We
buy the Toca Boca and Sago Mini games and the occasional game from other
providers that strike the kids fancy.

But this is a huge development. Big enough that I'll be dropping the Android
devices and switching my kids over to Apple ones completely. As it is I have
lots of conversations with them regarding why some games they see will never
be bought by us (like those awful Thomas and Friends ones that you have to buy
then still have ads and IAP to put up with).

Thank you Apple. But also, shame on you industry for making this something
that I need to specifically look out for.

~~~
fhsm
What do those conversations sound like with Thomas age kids? If you’ve got
tips, metaphors, known failure, anything at all on how to create a class level
understanding that short circuits per instance debates I’m all ears.

~~~
the_unknown
LOL. I ended up going overboard on it and actually took them to a store for
Teachers' materials and bought some exercise books on Media and
Currency/Finances and we've ended up with a bunch of discussions about
personal finances, the advertising world, and critical thinking. I'm trying to
instil in them the ability to analyze what they see, understand what the
motivations of others are and translate that to the messages they receive.

If all goes well they'll understand what ads are and how they manipulate us
from a young age and be better able to deal with this crazy world as they grow
older. Of course this is a long game - I don't know if I'm being successful
yet but I'm hopeful.

------
gorkemcetin
This has been something both requested and discussed online for a long time.
Kids can't really decide what information to share and what not, and they are
often bombarded by retargeting ads supported by analytics services. It still
remains unclear how those apps will make money using 3rd party ads, but it is
clear that kids apps won't be able to use 3rd party SaaS services (Mixpanel,
Amplitude, Firebase, etc) and have to rely on same-domain-on-premises and/or
open source product analytics services, eg Countly (shameless plug: I am co-
founder of Countly, building an open source analytics platform particularly
for privacy and security reasons).

Let's see how it goes. Apple sometimes comes up with a "quick" decision and
then stands down after a few months as criticisms occur. I expect that
corresponding wording will change until the section goes into effect.

------
pnutjam
That's great, except there is no way to create a "kids" account without
another apple device.

My kids school won't participate in the program to create kids accounts for
schools, and I don't own other apple devices. So on my rented ipad, the only
option is to create a 13+ year old account (for my kindergartner). So now that
she's in 2nd grade, apple thinks she's 16.

I've complained about this endlessly to the school, and talked to a couple
lawyers. Apparently there is no legal issue because I have to create the
accounts, so they are my accounts. I'm just letting my kid use them.

So... apple sucks, give us a web-ui for creating child accounts. I don't mind
having a parent account, but you cannot have family accounts without an Ipad
or some other apple device, and a single ipad is a single user device.

~~~
gridlockd
> I don't mind having a parent account, but you cannot have family accounts
> without an Ipad or some other apple device, and a single ipad is a single
> user device.

You can't just log in to the ipad with a parent account, create a child
account, log out, then log back in with the child account?

~~~
pnutjam
I tried this, but whenever the child account needs approval, your done. You
can't approve anything so your child is stuck.

------
crazygringo
> _Apps in the Kids Category may not include third-party advertising or
> analytics._

Totally agreed for advertising... but analytics are essential to improving the
quality and usability of apps including for kids, and they're a real cost to
roll your own. Using third-party analytics is like using a third-party JPEG or
MP3 decoder: it almost never makes sense spending 100's or 1,000's of hours
writing your own.

So I don't get it. What's the harm for kids in third-party analytics? Third-
party analytics are just a service, they're not necessarily ever correlated
with anything else. But even if they are, the only argument I can imagine is
not helping further build up advertising profiles... but if kids aren't seeing
the ads _anyways_ then again, what's the harm?

~~~
dawnerd
Because it’s wrong?

~~~
crazygringo
What is wrong about it?

"Because it's wrong" isn't really a response without something backing it up.
That's what I'm asking -- what's the harm, where's the wrong?

The harm in advertising is obvious. A harm from third-party analytics is not.

~~~
dawnerd
Analytics can be harmful too. Developers use it to make the app/game stickier,
more attractive to children. Children also have no way of consenting or even
knowing what analytics are. Not only that but there’s no knowing what happens
to the analytics at third parties - regardless of their privacy policies.
Basically all third party analytics are designed to build profiles and help
marketing.

Plenty of safe ways to track interactions that don’t rely on third party
scripts which gobble up all kinds of data. Plus might even be illegal
depending on jurisdiction.

~~~
notatoad
>Developers use it to make the app/game stickier, more attractive to children

another way to phrase that is "developers use it to make the game more fun"

~~~
Avamander
Addictive does not always mean fun. Kids love bright things like lasers and
love to shine them into their eyes (I know I did), doesn't mean it's a good
idea - even if it is fun.

------
S_A_P
Here me out here- I equate apps with ads as predatory. The gut feeling from
many apps/games is that the goal is to annoy you into paying. Many “free”
games let you have one ‘turn’ and then force a 30-60 second ad on you that
usually redirects you to the App Store to download some other affiliate app.
Maybe I am the old man screaming get off my lawn, but when pc shareware was
the rage you usually attempted to delight the user into parting with their
money. Then I remember a shift in the late 90s where ad/malware started
showing up in shareware. That effectively killed the shareware market for me.
Rubberduck h30 was the app I remember as the culprit.

~~~
cbsmith
But this won't prevent ads. It merely prohibits third party ads.

------
Someone1234
How does this impact Google's "YouTube Kids" app. It is currently listed as
the "Best video app for all kids" on iTunes. It contains more videos
advertising stuff to kids than it does any other kind.

With McDonalds non-affilitated but clearly still ads being the most prominent.

~~~
lotu
Well given that Google own the AdSense/DoubleClick platform which is used for
serving ads on YouTube as well as all of it's own custom analytic tools none
of these would be third party. The part about not linking out of the app would
still apply though.

~~~
tdaltonc
Wow, so that really reinforce the trend toward monopoly and conglomeration in
tech. Make a kids entertainment platform and you must get acquired by google,
facebook, Amazon or Apple before you can turn on ads.

------
jsnell
Here's how I expect this to go:

1\. Six months from now, Apple will announce a new ad network, which will be
whitelisted for Kids apps.

2\. Twelve months from now, they'll ban all non-Apple ad networks in kids
apps. If they want to be subtle about it, I'm sure they'll find some
inappropriate ad to use as a pretext.

3\. 18 months from now, they'll open their ad network to all apps.

4\. 24 months from now, they'll ban non-Apple ad networks in all apps, and
swim in money as they've found another way to squeeze more money out of their
captive userbase.

And every step of the way, HN will cheer as Apple continues to brutally
exploit their ownership of the platform.

~~~
cyrksoft
What's the problem about Apple doing that? It's their platform. You can go use
whatever else you like, nobody forces you to use their system.

~~~
gnopgnip
Apple force's you to use their platform if you have an Apple device. You can't
install fdroid, or anything else.

~~~
asaddhamani
And that is why Apple devices are more secure, faster, more privacy-
respecting, and last much longer with good performance. That trade-off is
absolutely worth it to me.

~~~
wayneftw
Nope. Kids demand Apple devices because of the cool factor.

"Survey: 83% of US teens have an iPhone, Android 9%" \-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19610357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19610357)

Seems like they're abusing their monopoly to me.

~~~
cyrksoft
Where do you see a monopoly? The fact that people choose it doesn’t make it a
monopoly. Specially with that price tag. You can choose many other options.
There is no real economic argument to call it a monopoly.

~~~
wayneftw
"Survey: 83% of US teens have an iPhone, Android 9%" \-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19610357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19610357)

They've got a monopoly on kids devices.

~~~
cyrksoft
Market share is different from monopoly. Apple is not the only phone
manufacturer. There are many companies out there making phones. The fact that
everybody likes or chooses them doesn’t mean they are a monopoly.

~~~
wayneftw
Market share is absolutely a huge factor in defining who has a monopoly.

------
yawz
This should be the standard across the board, but unfortunately we're too far
from that. As a parent, it pisses me off to see not-age-appropriate
advertisement shown to kids.

~~~
xemdetia
Yeah, part of me wonders if this is just more a reaction to the apps market
hitting the next plateau and one of the last impulse growth markets being kids
apps. Once there is a special category it should create a new breed of app
that would inherently get less complaints/refunds/etc.

------
lallysingh
This is the first thing I've seen Apple do that actually makes me happy about
them. I haven't considered one of their products in years.

------
busymom0
I develop for both iOS and Android and since last year, I have completely
stopped using ads in all my newer apps. I have switched to a freemium model.
On my recent HACK app for HN client for example, I let you use all features
and unlock features on a session basis. So lets say you switch on dark mode, I
let you use it for the session until the app is either killed by iOS or
restarted from the app switcher. Once restarted, you need to re-set the dark
theme and I just show you a popup asking you to support development with a one
time only small IAP. This freemium model has been working good.

On another of my apps, OLEDify I have used a tipping/donation model where I
give all features for free complete and hope that you will tip me whatever
money you like. This hasn't really gotten me much despite thousands of
downloads and DAU but I just don't want to support the advertisement companies
based on all the recent manipulative tactics they have been playing.

------
chillydawg
If I were apple I'd extend the definition of a kids app as any app thats
userbase is kids by majority. Not sure how to enforce or detect that, though!

~~~
MBCook
> Keep in mind that once customers expect your app to follow the Kids Category
> requirements, it will need to continue to meet these guidelines in
> subsequent updates, even if you decide to deselect the category.

Sounds like they’re ready.

------
Rebelgecko
Are first party ads better for kids?

~~~
vilhelmen
I'm curious what keeps "first party" analytics/ads just phoning home and doing
the third-party transaction server-side.

~~~
majewsky
Apple's banhammer, should the public ever catch you in the act. (I guess.)

~~~
bilbo0s
And their ban hammer is not terribly sophisticated either. They find one ad
that is the same, or similar to, an ad being served someplace else and WHAM!

Unless you've got money to burn, don't try to be nickel slick with Apple.
Learned that the hard way.

------
tyfon
I would be much more impressed if it said “Apps intended for kids may not
include advertising or analytics”

As it stands now it seems rather empty and in relation to recent news
something that could fuel the anti-trust talks.

Edit: considering that the law of my country states specifically that you can
not target kids with ads, I wonder how apple will handle it since they now
obviously have a method of tagging apps targeted at kids.

------
ricardobeat
Yes! This is amazing. The thing I most loathe is the advertising that shows up
when my kid is using one of the few apps we allow (and PAID for), in the
limited allotted time with the iPad.

Total feeling of powerlessness, especially when the content is not exactly
child-friendly: last one she told me about was an ad for a game with somebody
tied up, having his head cut-off, inside Cut The Rope.

------
duxup
I like it, leave kids out of this stuff rather than dance around policies and
enforcement about what ad networks are good or whatever.

------
arenaninja
Good; I only wish this is where applications on phones had started to begin
with. Try giving a toddler a phone and they'll figure out navigation controls
on their own easily, but once ads start playing they'll smash it because they
have no clue what to do. Ads have no place in apps for kids

------
thefounder
Next: apps/games for kids should not include micro-transactions/inapp payments

------
akerro
This is massive, Apple banned what Google does with Chromebooks for
kids/schools.

~~~
saagarjha
Chromebooks for education don't use the information for advertising, right?

~~~
MBCook
That’s what Google says.

------
fidz
In addition, you may want to see
[https://www.appstorereviewguidelineshistory.com/](https://www.appstorereviewguidelineshistory.com/)
for detailed changelog / history.

------
jm20
We have a decently popular kids app, Kodable, that helps kids learn to code.
While this is something we’re mostly already in compliance with and have never
actually included ads, I worry about the analytics.

We use anonymous analytics to track things like user completion through level
funnels. Nothing nefarious about it, if one of our levels is too hard for kids
and there’s a big drop off from one to the next, we want to know about it and
tweak it. I worry how this will effect stuff like that, but I also wonder how
you can even differentiate “proper” analytics usage.

------
sidlls
This is interesting.

What options does that leave for making money on these apps? Charging directly
and first-party ads? Are parents willing to pay for these apps?

~~~
iscrewyou
If parents are willing to spend money on consoles for their kids to play and
for school supplies for their kids to learn, this isn’t any different, right?

Parents will pay.

~~~
sidlls
Mobile is much more difficult to monetize than consoles. People have become
accustomed to getting mobile apps for free.

------
tlogan
This will not change a thing. I still have to see a kid which plays games from
"Kids category". So no Minecraft... no Terraria...

------
yalok
Can someone please clarify the “analytics” part? All kinds of analytics
services, or services that use your app analytics for their own purposes, or
use it for the sake of ads targeting/retargeting, or have PII risks?

I’m not sure I see the harm to kids if an app uses some ads-free analytics
provider like Amplitude just for its own 1st party needs... or am I missing
something?

~~~
scarface74
Do you have the source code to Amplitude? If not, you don’t know what the
binary blob you’re including in your code does.

~~~
yalok
yes, on iOS (Unity App) all of Amplitude SDK is in source code.

~~~
buremba
Yes, maybe they can't place an ad on your app but they do track all your user
event data which means that they can target them somewhere else. All the iOS
unique identifier, location, and user attribution data are collected directly
into their servers.

~~~
yalok
yes, they collect and store that data, but what if they don't use it anywhere
else other than for my app analytics?

It's a very vaguely defined rule which may create tons of additional work for
developers, yet may not improve the privacy in some cases.

~~~
buremba
Well, you can always use open-source solutions in order to collect your
customer event data into your data-warehouse and run your queries on your own
data.

------
ixtli
This along with the "sign in with apple" feature really makes it a good time
to be a bit of an apple fanboy.

------
robbrown451
Is this a new change? What is the backstory on this?

And how is "third party" defined? Sounds easy to game by having it only
directly communicate with the server of the app developer, and having it
completely impossible for Apple to tell whether or not they are then
communicating with a third party service.

~~~
anbop
An ad network is not going to trust your stream of requests, taking you on
your word that your requests are coming from actual users and that the ads are
getting shown back to actual users.

------
madrox
I worked for a very large company that's considered a leader in apps and games
for kids. I don't think this is as good as it seems first glance.

COPPA compliance isn't new. There are _some_ third party analytics tools that
are COPPA compliant, and any responsible company is already taking COPPA
seriously. What's new here is saying you can't farm responsibility for your
data collection to COPPA-compliant third party SDKs. My guess is because there
have been too many watchdogs raising concerns, and it's much easier to review
apps for compliance if you blanket ban third party SDKs with this purpose.

That said, this isn't going to change the business need. You'll just seem more
first party code hitting a first party wrapper to a third party service. It
will also encourage more small companies to try rolling their own, which
invites bad security practices and greater risk what the data that _is_
collected. I'm not sure that really helps kids or parents overall.

~~~
scarface74
Like I said above, what’s wrong with the simple idea of getting people to pay
for apps and avoid any ads?

~~~
madrox
I don't think there is, and there's a lot of apps with that model. However,
that's not the topic at hand.

~~~
scarface74
Hopefully with Apple making it harder to monetize via ads, it will be the
topic.

------
djsumdog
Can we get this rule for adults too?

------
bfrog
Working on an ad platform, this definitely makes sense.

As a company we moved away from user targeting to context targeting where app
developers provide all the context. Our case is specific to transit but I
think in general this invasive ad model needs to go away

------
tdaltonc
This means that if you make an app for kids, and you were planing on using ad
monetization, your only recourse is to get acquired by an Ad-Tech company
(Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon included) so that you can run "first-party
ads."

------
beaker52
I'm being drawn into Apple by their stances on things like this and privacy.
As much as I am bought into the Google eco-system, I'm questioning how long
that'll be for.

------
musicale
This is good, but they should probably ban all ads in kids' apps, particularly
ads that push microtransactions and in-app purchases.

~~~
bilbo0s
You're in luck. I strongly suspect microtransactions and in-app purchases are
next on the child content chopping block. (Well, at least for Apple.)

If you're making apps for kids today, you should definitely start looking at
how you can stay in business without these kinds of facilities.

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jiveturkey
Apple is so 'on it' right now.

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sadness2
Sounds like a missed opportunity for Apple to provide a curated, child-
friendly advertising channel.

~~~
cwkoss
> child-friendly advertising channel

There is no such thing. Children do not make purchasing decisions. Advertising
to children is adversarial manipulation of the development of their
preferences.

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rejschaap
I never thought I would say this, but I will get all of my apps from the kids
section from now on.

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whenchamenia
Can i just get kid cersions for all my apps then? Why should adults not enjoy
the same freedom?

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LukeBMM
How about adding an additional, voluntary section with apps that are bound by
the same standards and requirements, rather than segmented by audience or
purpose?

~~~
scarface74
I would hope that an adult would have the maturity to make the decision not to
use ad supported apps if they didn't want to.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Adults can't really make that decision for analytics though. Most iOS users
that don't use facebook have no idea that facebook has all of their data
including their location because third party apps are using facebook's
analytics SDK, for example.

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brightball
A great start!

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SparksZilla
This will include Facebook, right?

~~~
ClassyJacket
Facebook doesn't allow you to sign up unless you're 13 years old, and isn't in
the 'kids' category of the App Store, so this is not applicable.

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Creationer
Apple should just go all in:

Disable free to play games targeted at children completely. Require every
children's game to have an upfront price (I suppose the $0.99 minimum app
charge at least).

This would be great news for the market - game developers would focus on
building more rewarding gaming experiences, instead of just endless skinner
boxes. It would also help sell Apple devices, since developers would not need
to target the lowest-common-denominator for mass advertising appeal.

~~~
drivingmenuts
I think your optimism is misplaced. App developers would soon figure out how
to charge 99 cents for a Skinner box.

~~~
cwkoss
I wonder if you could list multiple copies of an MMO game client on an app
store, with each client having a different price and providing different in-
game aesthetic effects like "FooGame: Sparkly Hat Edition".

Could be an easy way to get around this limitation.

~~~
drivingmenuts
That already exists with the Basic, Advanced and Pro editions of some
application software. Extending that paradigm to a game is just a matter of
determining which expansion packs are preinstalled.

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throwayEngineer
But all Apple apps will continue to do this?

You really need to drink the Apple koolaid to think this changes anything.

~~~
scarface74
The only Apple app that has advertising is the App store. They've already
stated that the games that will be a part of Apple Arcade won't have ads.

~~~
throwayEngineer
But they will collect data for APPL

~~~
scarface74
Third party developers will send data to Apple? What’s Apple going to do with
it?

~~~
throwayEngineer
Apple has their own apps. Do they collect data on children?

Will they let some high profile devs slip by? Apple is known to be anti
consumer.

~~~
dang
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've
been doing it a lot, and it's not what this site is for.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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joegahona
I don't mean to be pedantic, but I'd argue that Apple copy writers should have
used "shall not" rather than "may not" in this text. The latter is ambiguous
and could mean "perhaps they won't..."

~~~
captainredbeard
Apple's copy writers didn't write it, their lawyers did.

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brownbat
If you charge for listing and take 30% for sales, people are going to try some
aggressive revenue techniques.

One of the biggest unsolved problems for users is how to get the security of a
walled garden while still encouraging open development, the sort of little
experiments that become free simple QoL apps or toy proof of concept programs
that spawn a business.

It's a problem only for users of course, less so for the gardeners.

~~~
scarface74
You mean they are going to charge enough money to account for the cost of
distribution? That could even be a new business model -- charging people money
and giving them stuff. Like software makers have done since the first personal
computer or game console came out? You realize that retail stores were
routinely charging 60%?

~~~
brownbat
This has sat for a while. I don't really understand why the sudden dismissive
sarcasm, but my best guess is I just didn't explain my point very well. You
probably don't care at all, but for posterity maybe I ought to explain what I
meant.

I feel like it's easier to find reputable free software on PCs than on app
stores. I'm not saying all software should be free, or that free software is
better than paid or ad-supported software, or that it's crazy to charge for
hard work. Nothing radical.

It just seems like on other platforms there are a variety of models that all
overlap. Less so on app stores.

My best hunch is that the dev fees have something to do with that.

I feel like you're saying this is purely a distribution cost, but all these
platforms are using the same Internet. I also don't think Apple is setting
these fees at pure cost. They have a captive set of users that developers
can't get access to in other ways. Monopoly rents for access to that unique
set of users wouldn't be that crazy.

Maybe I'm wrong though. If there's some other theory that explains this, I'd
love to hear it. "It's expensive to move electrons" doesn't seem to explain
why the ecosystems on different platforms are so different though.

EDIT: tone.

