Hacker News Reader

Comment by spenvo | Hacker News Reader

This rules inconsistency (alongside unpredictable (dis-)approvals and double standards for WeChat, Roblox, and (at times) Amazon and others) came up as one of a dozen reasons that, as a solo casual game developer, _launching_ in the App Store is not necessarily the no-brainer decision it seemed to be a decade ago (despite its enormous market power) I lay out in a separate post here https://keydiscussions.com/2023/07/26/as-a-web-game-dev-poin...

View on HN

There are about ~2m apps on the iOS App Store.

And if we assume on average 10 updates to each app then we have ~20m approvals/rejections.

Given that the process involves real people it is only normal for there to be many inconsistencies and double standards at this scale. Especially when the rules have evolved over the last 15 years and you have app developers who like to push the limits of what's allowed.

the issue is that this double standard is conscious and intentional, rather than simply an artifact of probability

At the very beginning it likely conformed to all the rules as there likely wasn't much functionality in v1.0. By the time it attracted the attention of Apple decision makers, it was too sticky to ban as another user pointed out.

i.e. Wechat users would rather switch to Android than lose the app.

I guess the lesson is that exceptions will be made if you can grow an app literally a million fold in a few years and become a vital part of your user's day-to-day lives.

I agree: this double standard is conscious and intentional, rather than simply an artifact of probability & randomness

Was there something you wanted to say in response to comment?

Reposting the exact same thought again seems a bit odd.

it seemed in your initial response to the topic of the probabilistic, random exception excuse, that you agreed with me that such an excuse wasn't credible, and that the exception was, and continues to be, made consciously and intentionally

I was just agreeing with your agreement (:

surely twitter also had the double standard, since i’ve never seen anything done to twitter despite the massive amount of nsfw on the app

Reply on news.ycombinator.com