Apple Rejects Academic App That Detects Net Neutrality Violations | Hacker News Reader

Apple Rejects Academic App That Detects Net Neutrality Violations

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63 pointstony10120 comments

1) Apple rejected an app that sounds like it does a good thing.

2) Developer has made up an interpretation to explain Apple’s supposed real, unstated, reasons for rejection, substituting it for the reasons Apple itself explained.

3) Since the app had a good reason for existing, developer’s made up theory must be the only possible correct interpretation.

4) QED

Anyone else see a flaw in this logic?

I agree that from the few and highly spun facts we have been given, it seems like Apple could do a better job here communicating back and forth and clarifying the potential issues. But to attribute the rejection to the presence of the words “net neutrality” seems a bit whacky.

Well, apple did supposedly say it was 'not appropriate.' So what do you think apple would consider to be 'not appropriate'? I'd guess things like extreme violence, nudity, promotion of racism.

I don’t know (how could I?) but I think the range of possibilities is wider than what you’ve mentioned. Perhaps it’s related to what they were quoted as saying, a problem with a discrepancy between the possible perceived reliability of the information and its actual reliability. I repeat, perhaps. I don’t know.

From the scant details provided, it looks to me that tgis could be out of context: "iOS operating system doesn't provide access to specific private APIs or other hardware that may affect the results."

My guess is he is trying to access non public apis.

This response is a much worse spin than that allegedly purported by the app author. So an app potentially flags net neutrality violations, why the fuck does Apple care? What's the exact app store rule that forbids random, inaccurate judgements?

I've argued this multiple times, but HN seems to not understand Apple's dominance in the app market. If your app isn't on the Apple app store, and your business model depends on payments (not advertising), then you're irrelevant in Western Europe, US and far East Asia. In the market segment that pays for apps & software, Apple is the dominant channel. In most other industries, such a pole position would qualify as a monopoly, but Apple is great at deflecting scrutiny, or the regulators are in their pockets. In either case, their BS app approval process is horrible for the industry, including the end consumers.

In the history of general purpose computing, never ever has a company sold hardware to the customer transferring ownership rights to the customer, and then locked the device up to apps approved by the hardware manufacturer, going as far as taking a 30% cut. How this is flying past regulators is anyone's guess, and as more time progresses, people will begin to think that running apps on hardware they own is a privilege, not a right. Ludicrous!!

My only spin as you call it is that we can’t really know why Apple rejected the app based on the thin and twisted say-so of this one developer who is willing to promote an odd theory about it.

Any app publishing platform has to make tradeoffs for security versus openness. Some people will think they get it wrong. You are one of those people, I get it.

But there are basic points your thinking does not acknowledge despite your statement that you’ve been over this before, so I suspect it’s not useful trying to explain much more than that to you.

Your "spin" is casting doubt on an academic app publisher. Your theory is just as plausible as the app publisher's. Effectively, both are "spins" unless verified as absolute truths

>So an app potentially flags net neutrality violations, why the fuck does Apple care

We have no idea whether they care.

You think they care just because you read someone say it on the internet.

Think about that.

That’s not a sufficient basis for knowing what was wrong with the app, nor what else was wrong with the app.

> Developer has made up an interpretation

I don't see any made-up interpretation. All I see is a direct quote from Apple's response when asked why the app was rejected.

If you didn't see it, it's because you didn't read what he said. Read on a little bit more and you'll see this:

"AFAICT, the app was rejected because we used the words "net neutrality" in the description."

That's not from Apple. That's from him. Made up.

> Read on a little bit more

How exactly do I do that? (I know that probably sounds like I'm trolling, but I'm not. It's a serious question. I never use Twitter.)

What did you see when you viewed the link? For me all I had to do was scroll, no special knowledge needed beyond that.

Maybe if don't have an account it shows something different.

Oh, I see, those are followup tweets. I thought they were responses. Didn't pay close enough attention.

So I still don't see any "made-up interpretation". All I see is a sober recounting of their questions and Apple's replies, and one very defensible (IMO) interpretation of the events, clearly labelled with an "AFAICT" disclaimer.

There are many reasons that network speed can vary from request to request on a mobile device, right? Detecting some differences, applying statistical tests and then definitively calling it a "net neutrality violation" does not seem to me to be particularly reliable.

So if Apple's point of view is something like "making this available to unsophisticated users will create a lot of drama, much of it probably unjustified," then I have to admit I'm sympathetic.

Net neutrality is a emotionally charged issue right now, and I'd suggest that proponents are best served by being very confident that the abuses they report are actually abuses.

On top of that, wireless networks were are least partially exempted from the Title II rule anyway, so even if it were still in force, iPhone carriers would still not be subject to all its rules.

> Recall that shaping is implemented by looking at the contents of your network traffic to see if it belongs to a given application. We can exploit this observation to “turn off” shaping as follows: we simply send the same traffic, but replace the original contents with random strings.

Is this accurate? My understanding was that T-Mobile and others throttle based on the source network since most streams are encrypted, preventing content analysis (which would also require significantly higher processing).

Yeah, there are a bunch of different kinds of net neutrality violations and this app only tries to detect some of them. DPI seems increasingly pointless from the ISP's perspective now that everything is encrypted, so detecting DPI is fighting the last war.

Apple has come to the forefront as defenders of users privacy, net neutrality and generally having a fairly laissez faire attitude towards the app store (at least as far as games, IAPs, and questionable apps) so this is going to raise questions. If they seem to block more researchers apps this, for me, will requirs sufficient explanation. With the few facts already public I am already pretty disappointed in their handling of this

Does anyone have the link to the research paper behind this app?

I believe it is this one: https://david.choffnes.com/pubs/imc095-molavi-kakhkiA.pdf

Thanks!

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