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A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process (sreegs.tumblr.com)
194 points by AndrewDucker on Dec 26, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 155 comments



> In the case of Tumblr, this would be a reviewer going to search, typing in something like 'tits’ and finding porn.

Just want to emphasize this part. App Store Reviewers are completely asinine. Like, dumb as a rock. It’d almost be funny if their stupidity didn’t block your app approval.

To be explicitly clear: if your app contains UGC, they will explicitly go and search for things to ding you on, and then fault you when you find it. They will go to the search bar and type in “milf” or “butts” (I wish I were joking). They’ll try to search for drugs on your marketplace. If your app runs scripts, they’ll try downloading something and then yell at you for letting them do it. The review messages they leave you bend over backwards to try to fault you for what they do in the app…things like “during review, your app downloaded code” (the reviewer went out of their way to find a way to load a script from the internet) or “your app presents adult content” (the reviewer created an account and immediately searched for “sex”). These are the people who misspell their demo account passwords and will claim the app is broken, so these idiots are almost proud when they find these, almost like they’re finding a gotcha.

Of course, these rejections are all bogus. In a good system they wouldn’t happen, or if they did you’d dismiss them summarily. Instead, you need to plead and escalate until you find a person who’s not a complete bozo. Sometimes, in desperation, you come up with random filters in the hopes that they’ll just leave you alone this time. Careful, though: if you give up too much ground you won’t have any to give next time.

The entire process is just designed to wear you down, to create apps that conform to a pretty image where people post about their dogs and food rather than anything that could possibly be objectionable. Platforms rightfully try to keep their own standards on their content, but many slowly give up and slide into what’s easy to defend. Apple is only behind payment processors and advertisers in forcing platforms to prude up :(


Oh yeah. At my previous job at a large Russian social media company, I remember our app getting rejected over this. They went to the video section, disabled safe search, and searched "porn". Lo and behold, naked people came up! And this was the reason for rejection. Like, what tf did you expect to see by doing that, cat videos?! And it's not corporate America, so our ToS did not disallow porn. From our point of view, the app is just working as intended, and no rules were broken. And the app was rated 18+ anyway.

And then "illegal file sharing". On a strange coincidence, they started enforcing that one relentlessly just as Apple Music was preparing to launch. Yes, you could upload, search, and stream mp3s on our service without any regard to this dumb thing called "copyright". No, it's none of Apple's business to be policing any of this.

IMO, at this point, the only way out of this is for Apple to be forced by law to allow sideloading apps on iOS.

edit: I now vaguely remember that at some point we created special limited accounts for iOS reviewers. This somewhat eased the pain, but they would sometimes sign up for their own accounts too and see things they weren't meant to see. I didn't participate in any of this first-hand because I was working on the Android app.


Was this Russian social media company Vkontakte?


Yes.


> They will go to the search bar and type in “milf” or “butts” (I wish I were joking). They’ll try to search for drugs on your marketplace.

I don’t understand why you think that’s dumb. This is what people who download the app will do, so they’re trying out real scenarios that will happen. They don’t want to have there be a segment on the nightly news saying, “App Store Full of Porn!” Which is what will happen in these scenarios. That doesn’t excuse letting Twitter and Reddit get away with it, of course, but it makes perfect sense that they do that. There’s nothing dumb about it.


There’s a couple of responses already, but I think they miss the main point: when the Apple reviewer goes out and does this, they don’t mark your app for “unrestricted web access” (which is the category third party browsers go in, and immediately makes them rated 17+). That would actually make sense, even if you consider it “unfair” because Apple’s own apps of course don’t get those ratings.

No, the problem is that when a reviewer finds anything “questionable” in your app, they mark it as a porno app. Pornographic apps cannot be in the App Store. That rule is designed to keep PornHub off the store (again, putting the morality of this aside…) and yet Apple equates your app with them even if 99% of your content is squeaky clean. The reviewers specifically seek out content that they want to flag, and the problem is that they then reject it by representing it as if they just stumbled upon it by accident, or that it’s so prevalent that it’s obviously the purpose of your app. So now you’re stuck arguing that your app is not a portal for porn in these absurd cases where the reviewer has, through their misunderstanding of the rule, changed the argument from “is your app primarily focused around the consumption of pornography” to “does your app make nudity available to a determined user”?


The app store should have porn. I'm sick of American corporations' War on Breasts. These days the comedy bit would be "7 words you can't say on the App Store"


Typical American cultural prudeness where nudity is taboo but violence is glorified.


I have fond memory of playing those "buddy" apps on my iPod when I was younger where you would throw staplers and chainsaws and whatnot at little virtual guys who were trapped behind the screen. Mildly sadistic? Sure, but I really wonder what was going through the head of the reviewer who allowed all 15-some iterations on that idea to get put up on the App Store while finding a picture of boobs in your app is carte-blanche means for removal.


> . This is what people who download the app will do, so they’re trying out real scenarios that will happen

let's ban browsers then or chat apps or sharing apps

and why not apps in general that play images and videos and that enable people to send aforementioned images and videos?

you know what? now that I think about it, let's ban the smart (computing) part from iPhone.

but let's not stop there, let's ban the phone part too, because one could always call an hotline or make a booty call...


>> . This is what people who download the app will do, so they’re trying out real scenarios that will happen

> let's ban browsers then or chat apps or sharing apps

you joke, but telegram had to implement porn-filters for group chats on ios/macos.


> let's ban browsers then or chat apps or sharing apps

This would be Apple's dream.

Latest headlines? Here's Apple News.

Movie trailers? Don't have those, but here's Apple TV +

Online gaming? Apple Arcade.


Stop giving Apple exec's ideas, they might be reading this site.


That doesn't make sense to me. The iPhone comes with a web browser. If a user wants milfs and butts they can put that in the address bar.


> The iPhone comes with a web browser.

The iPhone comes with a web browser that has parental controls. A parent can have some degree of control over what their kids see when they use Safari. A parent does not have that choice with typical applications.


If that's the problem, then simply add a setting which apps can check.


If that's the concern, then Apple needs to deliver a parental controls API that apps can use to check whether or not the app needs to use filters. Otherwise, their complaints are wholly their fault for not having the functionality to let people discriminate between safe and unsafe content.


Sure they do. I’ve used those parental controls myself.

Every single app in the App Store has an age rating. An underaged user can only download apps in the age categories that their parents have specifically authorized.


So the general agreement is that people should not be allowed to consume porn in the united states?


Not sure if you were saying this ironically, but I firmly believe limiting the consumption of porn would be a net positive. The negative effects are at best overlooked, but normally twisted, and the average age of first experience with porn keeps dropping.


The constant struggle to control what other people can consume. Outside of things like CSAM (which I have zero desire to view) I don’t need a nanny telling me what I can view


Also, anyone who feels entitled to impose on others for a cause this mild clearly has an underdeveloped respect for personal liberty and isn't going to stop there.


I don't appreciate the insinuation. The level of severity should not gate how people feel about this specific issue.


Let's lift it out of insinuation territory, then: I think you have an underdeveloped sense of respect for personal liberty and I think that if you won a victory on this front it would embolden you to continue chipping away at other liberties to further your circle of control. People love crusading against vices because the feeling of moral authority is heady and addictive. One hit is never enough.

The concept of liberty is how we rein in this dark tendency.


I don't disagree. I won't pretend to know how I would act if limiting porn consumption was actually implemented. But ignoring the thousands of people who self-report an ironically similar addictive experience you just described, but for porn, is dismissive and self-centered.


It looks like that if you buy apple products, you deserve a nanny because you are clearly a moron!

(I use 'you' as a generality, not you the poster ;-) )


Yes because limiting a vice based on what a few people “firmly believe” has always worked so smoothly and successfully in the past and has never caused any major societal issues. Worked so well in America for alcohol and drugs, why not give it a shot with porn too?


I didn't say ban. Unless you're for kids drinking at age 9 we're on the same page. And it's more than a few people at this point.


I am pretty sure the law does not deter any 9 years olds from drinking alcohol. I would even say that it is not because of the law that people do not give alcohol to their 9 years old kid. If it truly is because of the law, you have bigger issues I believe.


?

His analogy is perfectly consistent. There are laws prohibiting minors from purchasing alchoholic drinks. In the same way, porn can be restricted from minors. He is just saying that there needs to be strict enforcement of a law against porn to protect minors.

I guess your argument is that there is no need for a law against alchoholic drinks since there is common sense to not give alchohol to minors and for minors to not drink alchohol.

But the existence of laws regulating alchoholic drinks purchase suggests that common sense is not enough and laws need to be created for it.


I love how any time anyone says that maybe porn shouldn't be available for every 9 year old with a tablet people get up in arms about it.

OP didn't say ban all porn, but it should be more tightly regulated and its consumption has proven to be damaging.


I'm actually agreeing with you at this, but how should this regulation look?

Also, I believe there are a number of non-porn sexual education resources, which should stay available.

However, note that the current crackdown on porn isn't about underage consumers, it's about consumption in general. Apple isn't asking for age verification, they are banning adult content completely.

OP said Apple's stance is reasonable and Apple is pretty close to saying "ban all porn".


> This is what people who download the app will do, so they’re trying out real scenarios that will happen. They don’t want to have there be a segment on the nightly news saying, “App Store Full of Porn!” Which is what will happen in these scenarios.

Lets ban web browsers.


Why not just stick on an NSFW warning and restrict downloads for minors, and maybe treat your adult users as adults?


13-18 is a major spender age category. I'd really like to say a breakdown but I think most of app store revenue comes from games.


Why would the news say that app store is full of porn when you search it on Tumblr but not when you search it on Reddit? If they let at least one company do it it does seem kind of dumb.


I don't know about tumblr, but reddit doesn't allow nsfw subs out of the box on mobile, and for logged in users, you have to explicitly enable it.

Obviously you can still find nsfw content on reddit that isn't labeled as such, so beyond that, it's probably up to the developer's soft skills. reddit probably has some people who are good at framing the app in communication with review, escalating review decisions, and communicating content policies in a way that makes them seem consistent and trustworthy.

I don't know about tumblr, but unfortunately, I don't think many indie apps with user-generated content would have the bandwidth to develop the same relationship with app stores. So there is some de facto gatekeeping happening that benefits the largest and most well-spoken social networks.


> I don't know about tumblr, but reddit doesn't allow nsfw subs out of the box on mobile, and for logged in users, you have to explicitly enable it.

This is an Apple rule. From the App Store Review Guidelines:

> If your app includes user-generated content from a web-based service, it may display incidental mature “NSFW” content, provided that the content is hidden by default and only displayed when the user turns it on via your website.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#use...


Let's be honest, it likely has much less to do with developer soft skills and more to do with the value Apple perceives from the app being on their platform. The big fish will have more sway; it makes good business sense but it's anti-competitive.


I don't agree, but even if true, the developer can influence the perceived value of their smaller or newer application.


> the developer can influence the perceived value of their smaller or newer application

by influence you mean "conform"?


No. This goes back to the original soft skills comment. Developers who can convince app review that they have a solid and trustworthy process, and more successfully escalate and have conversations about the review process, and frame their app differently to change the perspective of review, are able to get more interesting USG into their app (the opposite of conforming.)

The problem, as I said earlier, is that indies have no chance of spending enough time developing their app and also having time to do this or of hiring someone to do this. This is where the gatekeeping comes from. I think it actually keeps them from launching and growing, not just publish with neutered content (what you call conforming.)


The escalation path mentioned in the original post ("developer support contact", I think more officially a Worldwide Developer Relations Partnership Manager) is invite-only.


So allow sideloading. Problem solved.

And as a nice bonus, app store would then have to actually compete with those alternate sources. As macOS shows, when the use of the app store is not mandatory, almost none of the developers will be taking the app store seriously and will instead handle the distribution of their apps themselves just fine.


I feel like with that logic web browsers should be banned including their own. There’s nothing stopping me from buying a brand new iPhone and immediately opening up safari and finding porn. Heck even their own search feature built into the OS can do this. Rules for thee and not for me.


Is Safari not able to search for porn on iOS ? Or is Apple only trying to protect their revenue sources ?


This reminds me of security guards at various places, such as malls or parks. They take great pleasure in “enforcement” and in inconveniencing people beyond the limits of common sense. Their work happens to be the place where they can exert control while other areas of their lives may not be so great. I wonder if the App Store review recruitment process somehow (inadvertently?) selects for such people who “take it out” on the app developers because the other areas of their lives are terrible.

These stories are all about exerting control, and bring no value whatsoever for Apple.

For these and other reasons, I hope Apple is forced to allow side loading of apps. Apple hasn’t spent a lot of effort on the App Store (despite PR claims to the contrary). Seriously, the person at the top in charge of the App Store has been sleeping on the wheel for a long time.


I call them stupid, but mostly because they act like they are stupid. My impression is that Apple's policies basically force them to be like that–they're worked hard, with little time given on each app, and probably graded on some sort of scale that incentivizes finding problems in apps. And, I mean, not everyone is an expert in the App Store Review Guidelines–it's actually fairly long, there's a lot of case law you need to take into account, and a bunch of unwritten policies that only get attention when your app happens to hit it and you know what is going on.

What Apple really needs to do is basically tell all their reviewers to stop flagging apps on this. It just causes general discontent everywhere: it's an obvious annoyance to developers hit by it, and the ones that know how to fight it will drag it on with you and hate you the entire time, and the ones that don't will change their apps and also hate you the entire time. I think–and this is just a guess–that they don't do this because they just don't want to have this content at all, not for any sort of prudishness, but because of the exact same reason everyone else shuns it: it's frequently a source of problems, they get into trouble with it when the news covers it in a bad light, etc. They like having blanket authority in this area, and think that whatever problems they're causing (which they are absolutely aware of, by the way) are just not a big deal, just like they are holding on to their 30% or whatever.

Of course, whatever reasons they have mean very little when the net effect is that this "problematic" content gets hounded off of the platform. You can say you don't hate this all you want, but when the actions you take have an effect in a certain direction and you don't do anything about it even when presented evidence about it, you're basically just accepting that you don't value it very much. And, frankly, that's just total garbage, because Apple wants to control all distribution on iOS, which means they have a moral obligation to deal with all of these issues. You don't get to wipe your hands clean of things you don't like and also say you want to be the sole arbiter for everything. But that's just a familiar big tech thing ;)


> App Store Reviewers are completely asinine

I recently had an interaction with a food delivery customer care executive (many like this; of other businesses as well) and the kind of conversation I had with them it seemed to me that someone must have flattened the brain matter with a rock before stuffing it back inside their skulls.

Then it dawned upon me. Nope. They just are as much a victim of these huge corps and their lawyers and their policies that any slip could mean losing their jobs if it turned out that they didn't toe the written line by the letter.


At this point it's really better to automatize support. They can't do anything a policy rule-based bot couldn't do.


That's one of the reasons representatives are stuck with scripts and decision trees these days: it's just another step on the road to complete automation of phone support.

Having dealt with companies that decided to automate their phone support entirely, this is not something to look forward to at all.


But when companies do this, people complain there isn't a human they can talk to ( e.g. Google, even if they explicitly have chat and phone support if you pay).


How do Reddit and Twitter pass the App Store review process? I'm pretty sure you can trivially find porn by searching for it.


Have designed and built apps for several high profile brands.

When you are big enough: apple occasionally send an engineer to share upcoming features, or nudge you in a direction they are keen to promote (2018 it was all AR) and at this point someone in C-Suite has a human contact to smooth out App Store BS.

So OP is correct in that it’s about size/apple seeing you as an asset and not a problem - they want those shiny family friendly releases for advertising material.

I used to think the App Store governance was a good idea. I no longer do.


When you're big enough, there's a chance that the boss's boss at Apple uses your app and will come talk to you and save you from The Process.

Also, if everyone uses your app, when it breaks then people will not necessarily complain to you, but to Apple instead since people can't tell the difference between the phone and the app, so to avoid the idea that your phone breaks, Apple will let you update your app instantly.


AKA "The reason why Roblox is allowed on the App Store and iDOS 2 isn't".


They follow this rule:

> If your app includes user-generated content from a web-based service, it may display incidental mature “NSFW” content, provided that the content is hidden by default and only displayed when the user turns it on via your website.

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/#use...


So why don’t tumblr and other apps plagued by this no NSFW rule follow this?


Can you? Reddit makes you change a setting, save it, reload the page, uncheck a couple more settings, save, before you can see adult content these days. per-account

quick test logged out:

search "butts" -> no nsfw results on first page search "tits" -> a couple unlabeled nsfw posts (against reddit rules.)


It is enough to search for a pornstar's name to find porn in the Reddit app. This works even if you don't have an account and NSFW content is disabled. While it's not as "simple" as a porn keyword, it is almost certain people do this. Reddit relies on people tagging their content as NSFW, but of course this is not something they can enforce 100%. And once you find an account posting NSFW, you can access all their NSFW posts even if they were made on subreddits that are hidden to you if you search for them explicitly in the search bar.

By the way, when I typed the actress' first name, I was already being suggested a subreddit dedicated to sharing nude pictures of another woman with the same name. Again, I used the app as it comes straight out of the App Store without logging in or changing anything.


open a browser, navigate to https://www.reddit.com/r/tits/, click yes, done!


Holy shit. Since when is there naked women on the Internet?


When I go to that link (on iOS), my only option is to “view in app”, which is a shitty option to offer.

PWAs would free them from having to put up with Apple’s restrictions crap.


> PWAs would free them from having to put up with Apple’s restrictions crap.

Apple knows this, hence why they've not implemented the features needed by PWAs, and why they ban all browser rendering and JavaScript engines besides iOS Safari's.


Couldn't you just create an account for them that has a few whitelisted posts that are squeaky clean? Or better yet apply the whitelist when a request is made from a not-yet-released version of the app, based on headers?


Secretly giving Apple’s reviewers a different version of the app is a very good way to get them really upset at you. (And, IMO, rightfully so: you’re no longer acting in good faith. They might not be either, but when you’ve changed your position you lose the ability to make the “we tried our best to be reasonable” argument.)


Yeah I found the fact that Apple removed Tumblr for explicit content and not Reddit or Twitter to be completely arbitrary.

People usually don’t like governments picking winners and losers, and so they shouldn’t like companies doing so.


Looks like they get paid per rejection


> They will go to the search bar and type in “milf” or “butts” (I wish I were joking). They’ll try to search for drugs on your marketplace. If your app runs scripts, they’ll try downloading something and then yell at you for letting them do it

This is all just fictional garbage, which you totally made-up.

I’ve been through hundreds of app reviews, and if a problem is ever found (rarely) the reviews are always polite, and carefully worded, erring on the cautious, and with absolutely zero chance that anyone from Apple is ever “yelling”.

Incredibly sad indictment of HN that these glaring untruths are given any credence at all.


Please make your substantive points without breaking the site guidelines. You did that badly here.

If your point happens to be correct, this is particularly important, because by posting like this you end up discrediting it. Your comment would be just fine without the first and third paragraphs.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: you've unfortunately been doing this repeatedly (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29549948) and we've had to warn you about it at least once before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29109123). Would you please stop posting like this? We ban accounts that keep breaking the site guidelines and ignore our requests to stop, and I don't want to ban you.


You have fallen into the trap of “it’s not like this for me, so this person is lying”


Well I guess my own experiences with Apple reviews must be fictional garbage too then!

(I should clarify that, like GP, I am referring to the substance of the review, not the tone.)


> Well I guess my own experiences with Apple reviews must be fictional garbage too then!

This has fallen off the front page, so I’m asking out of real curiosity:

1. Have you genuinely had an app rejection that states that the reviewer typed “milf” (or something equivalently unlikely) into a search bar - and that is given as the reason for the rejection? ie: how else does the OP know this is the actual reason?

2. Do you genuinely believe Apple employees have yelled at the OP during an app dispute?

I absolutely think it’s just made-up lying fantasies. But I’m willing to reverse that if anyone supplies some contrary proof.


Hi! I assure you, everything I wrote is accurate to the best of my knowledge, except for one part I should probably address first: yes, nobody in app review will literally “yell” at you. Their correspondence will be invariably polite; I simply used it as a figure of speech to indicate that they will flag you for something. In a sense, the politeness is even more irritating because you’ll get a message like “sorry, we can’t approve this app” and then a rep will come on and parrot the same thing to you, and regardless of how polite they are you know you’re going to have to deal with a significant headache at best and a complete loss at worst, if whatever Apple wants you to change is integral to your app.

Now, to answer the other part: yes, as stupid as it sounds, they do exactly this. I work on iSH and they flagged a build of our app for package management functionality. Ok, we said, that’s not the main purpose of the app, and we don’t want to fight you about it, so we’ll remove it. And they approved it…for a bit, until they rejected it again. Why? “During review, your app downloaded code”. Our app doesn’t download code. What actually happened was that we ship a wget, and the reviewer used this to go to a website and re-download a package manager, and then used that to download code. I mean, what are we supposed to do in response to that? We removed what you wanted us to remove (even if we didn’t have to, based on a close reading of the rules) and if you are going to go and download it again, what are we supposed to do?

I’m not really in a position to speak for my employer and their review experience, but the UGC content/porn example is one every social media app knows about. You’ll get a rejection in App Store Connect with the “problematic content” and you’ll go check up on the demo account you gave them and it’ll have these terms in the search history. Blonde, boobs, sexy: it’s the stupidest search queries, but they will absolutely go and type those words into the search field and flag you for it, and your analytics will confirm it.


op mentions it largely happens for UGC content apps

so no surprise you haven't found any such reviews if you're doing completely different apps


It's appalling to me that iOS developers still exist after all the hoops you have to jump through to get an iOS app out. I'm a web developer that got roped into developing and then publishing a react native app for android and iOS. The android process was relatively painless compared to the crap Apple has you do. For starters, you can't even produce an app build without running on iOS, so the company had to procure an old Mac just so we could compile. Once I got Xcode set up, I learn that I need to connect to an iPhone as a target device in order to build. Thank god for small companies and being able to get things done quick. Another hoop and painful 30-40 minute compile times later (for a relatively small app mind you, also caching didn't seem to help whatsoever cause even back to back compiles were still slow as hell), we finally get out a build out on TestFlight, only to wait an undisclosed amount of time for Apple's approval.

I realize these aren't issues if you're already drunk on the Apple Kool-aid and have the latest Mac with the latest iPhone. Then these barely seem like hurdles, but to someone who hasn't already sold their soul to Apple, publishing an iOS app should not be this difficult.


Well:

> Anywho, that’s Apple for you. Why am I still an iOS developer? I dunno, I got bills to pay.

People will chase the money. Even with the onerous review process and 30% cut, there's still a good amount of money to be made on the App Store.

This is the standard collective action problem: if a significant chunk of iOS app developers just said "that's enough, we're not working on this anymore" (and if legions of other developers didn't surge in to replace them), then you better believe things would change. But no one wants to stick out, and most software developers seem to think they're too good for a union.


> software developers seem to think they're too good for a union.

Unionizing in global workforce is a fool's errand. Especially when authoritarian governments exist.

Even if there was an IT worker's International, some asshole in e.g. North Korea can prevent IT workers joining on pain of death.

Or outlaw it. Or deem it a terrorist hacker collective.


  > Unionizing in global workforce is a fool's errand. Especially when authoritarian governments exist.
whats the alternative?


The reason is of course money. The profit per user on the Apple garden is light years beyond any other platform. I've seen the exact same app make 100 times as much money on iOS than on Android with half as many users.


> I need to connect to an iPhone as a target device in order to build.

This is not correct. You can build just fine without any iOS device.


Alright, I looked around and finally came across this StackOverflow answer[0] that supports your point. Turns out, if you use let Xcode handle code signing for you, you need a physical device for it to target (which is what we were doing), however there also exists an option to manually sign code yourself, in which case you wouldn't need a physical device. Thanks for the correction, I'm glad to be wrong!

[0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/58920415


You can just select the simulator target if you’re testing your app. When making a release build, you can either select a real iOS device or the generic iOS device that is there for that purpose. (Honestly, I agree with you on some of your points, but some of them seem a bit contrived or a derivative of “I need to learn how to do things in Xcode”. I’d be the first to admit it has a confusing interface for some things, but there’s also like some part of it you’re just going to have to deal with.)


Building reactnative apps is time consuming because of the library and it’s dependencies. Native compile times are much faster.


Can confirm this is true, however you should find that subsequent compiles are much quicker unless you’re doing something unusual.

If you’re just changing JavaScript it should be more or less instant (you may not even need to recompile, hit R in the packager console or use hot reloading). If you add a new native dependency or change some native code, it will have to recompile any affected parts of the code but you should still see much quicker compile times than from a clean state.


I find building react native apps much faster than building native apps. You don't need to recompile if you're just changing the javascript, and only a couple weeks out of the year have I actually needed to change any native code.


I agree. It speaks to the powerful draw of a (comparatively) affluent user base that people put up with it. Apple's remarkably hostile in their entire ecosystem. I wrote a web page which for some reason doesn't work in Safari. I spent an hour investigating, but since Apple won't even let me run their browser without spending thousands on hardware it's just not worth it to me to bother looking into it. Closed as won't fix, tell your OEM to be less of a pain.


Another Tumblr dev here:

That's not even going into the monetization pieces. As we are implementing tipping and multi-merchant subscriptions in Post+, we still have to use In-App-Purchases with it's severely lacking API.

The hoops we have to go through to get money from our App Store account to merchants are insane. We are using Stripe Connect infrastructure and Payouts API to do that, and that would be totally fine, as well as taking the fee hit.

The most insane thing is that the subscriber can be in a number of countries, where Apple fees differ (as they contain tax). But the webhook does not contain this information, so we had to reverse engineer the whole Apple pricing matrix and the fee calculation for each subscriber to know what portion to forward onto the Stripe account, and so on and so on.

It's been a ride.


Why do you deal with the app store and don't focus on web-only


Many, many users expect every single thing to be an app


This clearly isn't the whole truth given tumbler has a large banner asking you to download the app when you surf to the website.


It is the whole truth. App users come back more often and Apple deserves their share of credit


Um... Do you not see his this post is contradictory? In your last post, you said the reason was user expectation. Here you first say that's the whole truth, them immediately contradict yourself and say it's actually about stickiness, not expectations - apps are more addictive than webpages - a reason totally different than the "whole truth" you gave previously.


The App form factor is better suited to the user mental model of something they use daily. It has both higher stickiness AND it slots with their expectations. I made a mental shortcut of bundling these 2 together.

By definition I cannot provide the entire truth because only a slice of reality is available to me.

As such, the only "not contradictory" response to "is this entire truth" is no. Ergo you are correct.


I don't expect it to be an app. Why do you direct me to the webpage? Is it because you think I'll use your service more if it's an app? That's something you are doing for *you*, taking advantage of my addictive behavior, not something you are doing for *my* expectation.

It's not a partial truth in a tautological way. I'm saying something meaningful - please assume good faith and engage in good faith.


So maybe don't have an iOS app and put a big banner where app links are that "we don't have an iOS app because of Apple's app store practices, learn more here".


We are not Epic :)


But you're incentivizing that behavior. How does that help (and tumblr is a blog, it s more usable as a website than as a website-in-an-app


Our main business is not fighting Apple, although we support the open web quite a bit by leading the WordPress project https://www.protocol.com/matt-mullenweg


Sorry i m not trying to fight you nor did i say you have to fight apple, just maybe don't shove the app store on people's faces (I bet you don't have a "view tumblr on the web" link in the app). I m very grateful about wordpress , and we need more things to be open like wordpress , not gated behind overlords.


Last week we published a news article advertising a holiday deal for our premium subscription. Of course, our app shows our news articles.

So the following day, while we were submitting a bug fix release, a reviewer rejected the app on the grounds that it advertised a premium service that was not available via Apple’s IAP subscriptions. We later found out they were talking about the news article preview tile. Their demand was that we remove all outbound links to the domain that hosts the premium content unless we implement Apple’s subscriptions. This would have included news articles, guides, account sign in and settings and other core components of the app that just happened to link to the site.

So we did the only thing we could do. The entire engineering team committed the rest of the week (including the weekend) to complying with Apple’s demand and we integrated Apple payments into our backend and app. Of course this blocked us from deploying critical bug fixes but we had no other option.


The other side of this coin are apps that blatantly show banners on opening them to go to their website and purchase a subscription for cheaper. I reported one such app a few times to Apple (using the new report an issue feature on the App Store). It’s probably been at least a couple of months, and that app still continues to do the same.

It’s very clear that the rules are arbitrary and are not enforced uniformly. Apple doesn’t even seem to have an inclination to solve issues when they’re pointed out.


Why are you supporting apple and the 30% cut they take? Why do you as a user want apple to continue this?

We are developing a system for our client where their users have to buy a one time token to use it. The tokens are bought from the client's web shop. The iphone and android apps are webviews that contain the website. This was the only sane way to develop the apps because otherwise we would have to constantly deal with the idiotic review process. For example - we had added google sign in but zpple refused our review until we also added apple sign in. A feature that I haven't heard anyone of the customers actually use. Or we had a button going to the webshop. Had to remove this one because apple wanted a 30% cut. If apple got 30% of every token bought then our client wouldn't be in the business at all.


As a user, I want to be able to easily manage all of my subscriptions from one place in my device's Settings app and not have the experience I recently had trying to cancel my NYTimes subscription where I had to call, remain on hold for 35 minutes, and then have to:

1, submit to the rep's questioning about why I want to cancel, 2, argue with them over how sure I was about wanting to cancel, 3, refuse their discounted offers,

before I was permitted to finally cancel.

As a developer I get why other devs want more freedom regarding how they get paid for their apps/services, but as a user I have absolutely had it with these kinds of abusive practices that will surely follow if Apple allows them to happen.


How dare they try to circumvent Apple's magnanimous and generous 30% profit cut and offer a cheaper subscription?


Why would you report such a thing? Cut out the middleman.


They announced they would no longer do that last year:

> for apps that are already on the App Store, bug fixes will no longer be delayed over guideline violations except for those related to legal issues.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/06/apple-reveals-new-dev...

What did they say when you appealed the decision?


so true. we submitted an app that had “Sign In With Apple” in a localized version.

One reviewer rejected saying it should be “Continuar com a Apple”, we submitted and, on a later review, reviewer rejected saying it should be “Conectar com Apple” which it already was the first time.

That is extremely frustrating and arbitrary.


Well, the Sign in/Sign up with apple button automatically does the localisation. My guess is that you designed your own button and used your own localisation for Portuguese. On the first instance you found a Portuguese reviewer, and on the second a Brazilian.


Document and publish your experiences. It'll help countries in their fight against the App Store monopoly.

(Monopoly in the sense that 50+% of users in any given country are using a platform that only allows Apple approved and taxed instructions to run. Dating, entertainment, finance, etc. are Apple serfs.)


All those things can be done via the browser.


We were banned for encouraging users to fight terrorism

https://www.appunwrapper.com/2019/07/03/apple-rejects-nsa-in...


The old man in me thinks why bother participating in the App Store shenanigans at all in the first place? Why take all the stress? Just make something for the open web and enjoy life.

But, if no one speaks up, then the situation is going to only get worse. We don’t have a choice today, as Android ecosystem is worse than iOS. So here we are, almost 2022, still fighting extremely arrogant companies and walled gardens.

I really wish projects like pinephone etc take off.


Personally I don't and just release web apps. But if I was a for-profit company you can likely attract more customers by releasing an iOS app. Unfortunately the costs of complying with their policies are lower than the profit available.

On the other hand I don't see why users are happy to let Apple dictate which apps they are allowed to install. But as long as users are satisfied with that I understand why companies put up with it.


If rejecting apps that can lead to adult content (but not necessarily the main focus) seems to be the norm, how do reddit apps get around it?


The article has some speculation about this. A combination of Apple not wanting to ban larger apps like that, and larger companies having more staff to resubmit the app a thousand times to get through the thousand arbitrary rejections.


IIRC the most popular Reddit app on iOS is Apollo, which is just a solo developer.


I doubt this, Reddit has had their own app for years now and every Reddit mobile page on the web nags you to download it


The official reddit app is garbage. Apollo is a genuinely good app and people recommend it heavily on reddit itself.

Spamming users is not always a good tactic.


The article also mentioned twitter and instagram. All the apps that let you look at user generated content.


Instagram forbids NSFW content platform-wide.


Literal brothels run Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts and the content definitely isn't safe for work.


So does Tumblr, the way the article put it was that any site with user generated content would inevitably have awful things posted that get missed and might get randomly discovered by the randomly assigned reviewer's search and judge by the random reviewer's standards loosely based on some hidden guideline.

I don't know about these statistics, but Tumblr is definitely NSFW-only, that was the whole deal back in 2018 that got everyone angry at them. There were some other minor differences about defaults suggested in the article as well, it didn't seem especially conspiratorial.

Of course, tolerating twitter due to its size and ability to single handedly generate PR doesn't seem that conspiratorial to me. I'd be kind of surprised if that wasn't a big factor in double and quadruple checking the results before taking action instead of the reverse.


Twitter doesn't.


Can Apple ban Twitter without serious backlash?


They banned Epic Games store, which seems similarly high profile.


They could have done what Apple did with Telegram and only allow the iOS app to access SFW groups (or at least not known NSFW groups), while Android users have all the fun.


New accounts created on iOS is disallowed NSFW content and it has to be explicitly enabled from browsers


Just double checked — it seems there is a “allow NSFW” content switch in the iOS system settings. Reddit on iOS gives you a link into the system settings app when you search for NSFW content. But it does appear to be disabled by default in anonymous browsing mode anyways.


Anywhere there are humans involved, there are bound to be multiple interpretations of the same words. This becomes a problem when you put humans in positions where if they do their job well, there is no upside, but screwing up has a large downside. Most Apple Reviewers work keeping that in mind. Some are strict, others are not, and the chances are when you are matched with a random reviewer, your app would always be reviewed differently. This has downsides, but this reduces bias and malice (and keeps just incompetency in the process) and this is a better system than one where you are stuck with one reviewer throughout. (imagine being assigned the most anal reviewer possible)

Regarding the 30% cut and the review process, of course it does not make me happy as a developer. As a user though, I can give an iphone to my parents knowing full well that they would not be scammed or be enticed into downloading really shady apps. This has happened on android where they would just give away every permission, and had lock screen controlled by a totally useless app. I would not risk giving them free access to android again, no matter how much time it takes for them to get used to iPhone.

Review process is important in that regard, and if a bunch of devs like me need to pay to fund that, I am happy with that given what it results in on the consumer side. The 30% tax needs to be for infinitely reproducible digital goods - like items in fortnite where a new purchase in db entry - vs scare digital goods like an one time only online session by someone. The other alternative means it's contingent on me as a dev to build trust to get payments and this is where I would always lose out to big brands anyway. Wish there was a better way, but have no suggestions as to how.


I agree that it seems unfair that Tumblr has to deal with this while Twitter for example does not. Nonetheless, IMO it's not without reason. At least as of not long ago, it was much easier to accidentally bump into or see recommendations for adult content in Tumblr than in other social media. There's plenty of memes about "girls" being a banned term now, but Tumblr was notoriously full of CSAM.

I don't know if and how much Tumblr has improved in these fronts recently, but say what you will about Reddit, Twitter, etc. if you don't look for sexual material, you won't have it on your feed. They're also very good at keeping illicit material out of the platform.

I really hope Tumblr gets better at moderation. Outright banning a bunch of terms like this sounds like a desperate attempt at just getting rid of porn after years of not being able to control it, but far from an actual moderation strategy.


The App Store should have a blanket exception for any app that shows user content. The hypocrisy of shipping Safari, Mail, and every Stream Movie App is astounding. I do not want a company with fake morality determining what my morals should be.

At this point we need a new set of laws to govern the openness of app stores.


Interesting article, basically it boils down to "if your business model requires you to have an App in an App Store, your decades worth of work are at the whim of Big Tech". Same with Google banning accounts etc.

Divesting from Big Tech is the only solution. Don't write Apps, don't use AWS, etc.


Maybe we shouldn't create an app for every website?


Maybe Apple should improve PWA support so that could be a reality instead of a pipe dream.


Because you need a pwa for a blog website?!


Yeah, if you want to get notifications when people interact with your site.


Because there is no such thing like mail?


Mail =/= notifications.


Someone should really focus on building a trusted jailbreak solution so we (and not apple or google) can decide what we install on our $1,000 phones. Anyone knows a project working on this?


If you start distributing a jailbreak, Apple will patch it. If you sell it to an organization that buys exploits, you can enjoy your exploit indefinitely and make a nice chunk of change on top of it. Apple benefits from this dynamic greatly, as their App Store revenue is more important to them than their uses' security. They incentivize hoarding potential jailbreak exploits and selling them to the highest, and most likely malicious and deadly, bidders, instead of sharing them with users to increase their freedoms.


android + alternative store (f-droid or something else)


It appears that the apple tax and review process is a constant problem for iOS developers (according to many linked articles on HN)

If it genuinely is a big problem, why don't the apps band together and advertise the problem to their users? I'm guessing many users don't know/care right now, but might pay attention if the app they love suddenly pulls the plug on iOS.

Edit: like a union


They are advertising it, that's what this is. They're just not in a position to bargain though; Apple has proven time-after-time that they won't make changes to their policy unless faced with significant legal backlash. If you're a big developer, pulling iOS support would threaten your userbase and create a vacuum for lookalikes to take over your place, which is especially bad considering how Apple has no policy for curating "clone" apps. If you're a small developer, you're basically shooting yourself in the foot by not offering cross-platform support of your content, and losing out on a chunk of the revenue that you need to continue development. It's a catch-22, and a fairly well-engineered one at that.

Apple won't care about this unless legislators do. They defended their 30% cut as a necessary and inexorable part of the App Store experience until the Epic case, where they announced that actually they can make do with 15%, and maintain the same level of quality. I think we're forgetting how much of a bargaining chip Epic had, too; Fortnite, at it's apex, could not convince Apple to bend their rules regarding app distribution.

The only solution here is sideloading, the only question is how long it's going to take before the government lays down the law.


> If it genuinely is a big problem, why don't the apps band together and advertise the problem to their users?

Apple abuses their market position in order to leverage a chilling effect on talking about their abuses at all.

From[1]:

> If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/


A good percentage of resolving App Store problems for big companies is somebody at the submitting company calling up somebody they know at Apple high enough on the food chain who will unblock things personally. That and the business implications of a public complaint ("will Apple retaliate against us?") are why you see blog posts from individuals about App Store problems and not from big companies.

You would think if you make Apple several million dollars that they'd give you a dedicated account rep or something (like AWS, or nearly any other large managed service company does). Newp. $1 or a million dollars, you're all the same to The Big A.


> In the case of Tumblr, this would be a reviewer going to search, typing in something like 'tits’ and finding porn.

I just don't get it. With the current state of image processing ML hacking together an NSFW detecting horizontally scalable service is a question of days.

Then you just have to mark all your NSFW content by a flag in a database and stop showing it to iOS devices. That will make people think a bit next time when they choose a new mobile phone.


Does Tumblr have to be an app for any non-marketing reason?

If your website allows upload of porn, let it live in on the free internet as long as we still have it and don't waste resources on making it an "app". Problem solved. If that eats into your returns in a significant way, you don't have a viable business model.


> If that eats into your returns in a significant way, you don't have a viable business model

A viable business model is one where, by definition, consumers will purchase your thing at levels that are sustainable. People use apps more than they use web browsers for the most part. Tumblr has to build what people want.


...or what people think they want...


> a little part of me also wants to be cynical and say that since Instagram and Twitter are so big, they can get away with more than Tumblr can.

Didnt this get leaked?

Maybe that was about Facebook/Meta’s exemption of celebrity accounts

And I also might be confusing this for abuse of Apple’s enterprise signing key

Either way, small club and Tumblr aint in it


I made a satire game about Trump a few years ago. It got banned so many times from the AppStore and I had to write in long messages explaining how they are imposing their wrong interpretations onto my work and it took several weeks of messaging back and forth with them until they understood. They forced me to remove content from the app that I saw on Twitter using the iOS Twitter app. They did not force Twitter to remove the content. They banned my game for being pornographic because one of the mini games was called ‘Make Ivanka come’ but in the game you just had to call Ivanka to the president’s desk to get professional advice. The purpose of this obviously being satire to remind people how screwed up things are. Banning satire is like 1984, but banning porn also is in my opinion. At the same time the BBC runs reports about kids using Instagram to sell drugs which can cause actual harm. How can this be?


How come any internet browser can get past the 'porn' policy since all of them will show porn when you type 'porn'?


All the default engines are set to “moderate” by default. “Porn” does not show anything immediately explicit. A tiny hurdle, but still a hurdle and that is enough for many people to rethink. Tumbler you could by default get horrific images in search results.


Back when they had a developer survey, one of my feedbacks was essentially to get rid of App Review completely: not to try to fix it or reduce it but to literally shut the entire thing down. It really is that useless.




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