A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process
sreegs.tumblr.com
sreegs.tumblr.com
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 :(
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.
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 ;)
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.
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.
quick test logged out:
search "butts" -> no nsfw results on first page search "tits" -> a couple unlabeled nsfw posts (against reddit rules.)
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.
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.
> 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...
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.
Having dealt with companies that decided to automate their phone support entirely, this is not something to look forward to at all.
People usually don’t like governments picking winners and losers, and so they shouldn’t like companies doing so.
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.
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.
by influence you mean "conform"?
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.)
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...
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.
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.
Lets ban web browsers.
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.
The concept of liberty is how we rein in this dark tendency.
(I use 'you' as a generality, not you the poster ;-) )
OP didn't say ban all porn, but it should be more tightly regulated and its consumption has proven to be damaging.
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".
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”?
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...
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
so no surprise you haven't found any such reviews if you're doing completely different apps
(I should clarify that, like GP, I am referring to the substance of the review, not the tone.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
This is not correct. You can build just fine without any iOS device.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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?
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.
(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.)
https://www.appunwrapper.com/2019/07/03/apple-rejects-nsa-in...
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.
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.
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.
Spamming users is not always a good tactic.
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 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.
At this point we need a new set of laws to govern the openness of app stores.
Divesting from Big Tech is the only solution. Don't write Apps, don't use AWS, etc.
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
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.
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/
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.
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.
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.
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.
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