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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

That is the stated reason but it doesn't make any sense. There are games in the app store where you actually pilot a drone and blow people up and Apple has let them be. Are we to believe that graphically simulating drone strikes is not crude or objectionable, while textually reporting on real drone strikes is?

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You can believe what you want. Personally, I believe that either nobody has bothered to report the apps that are still up, or Apple doesn't give a shit about games because those are in their own bucket.

I think what it boils down to is that Apple shouldn't be deciding if newsworth facts are too obscene to be published. Should news apps be removed if they report on murders?

There's a huge difference between a news app that happens to cover murders and a "murder news" app that only covers that specific subset. The app in question is clearly much closer to the latter.

So, software that only provides reports on firearm-related-homicides in a neighborhood is a "murder news" app and should be banned?

I've been deliberately avoiding talking about what should be banned. I would expect Apple to remove such an app from their store once they found out about it, yes.

> I've been deliberately avoiding talking about what should be banned.

Given that Apple's de-listing rationale is arbitrary and capricious, restricting one's comments to attempts to predict what Apple might ban provides zero value to any conversation.

If you wanted to call their app removal criteria arbitrary or capricious, you sure picked some bad examples.

Their offensiveness meter seems pretty obvious to me. The only thing I'd really worry about is "apps that duplicate OS features" since you really can't predict that without insider knowledge.

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