Nice job Apple and Google, nice job.
If I were in charge, person who made the call would be out of job.
And if this was "company" decision, well, good luck to you all, and move to Europe. We love brunettes here.
If I were in charge, person who made the call would be out of job.
And if this was "company" decision, well, good luck to you all, and move to Europe. We love brunettes here.
Please, assume that I'm 12 years old, and try to explain.
Kama Sutra - not ok.
Killing people app[1] - ok.
???
I have no idea where this comes from, if it stems from some kind of deep rooted puritanical culture, but it's not exactly unique to Apple's app store.
I remember one especially biting criticism from a comedian or filmmaker who basically argued that we have it backwards with the ratings for violent films, and instead should rate certain war movies so that younger people actually CAN see them, and rate other, "fantasy" violence higher so only adults who can discern the difference can see them.
I think the example was "Saving Private Ryan" which is rated R, but in this new scheme would be PG-13, because it depicts war realistically. The James Bond movies, which are PG-13 because they have no gore, should be rated R, because the violence in them is depicted unrealistically: with no consequences, with effortless skill on the part of the killer, and with clear cut "good and evil" roles. I'm sure I'm butchering this argument, but I found it to be an extremely compelling one, if a bit too optimistic that this would ever change.
In games, see the recent article on Jonathan Blow that was posted to HN, called "The Most Dangerous Gamer". There's definitely a related discussion among certain game makers about violence in games.
But the underlying point still stands, even if that film is not a great example. Depictions of war should probably be treated be differently than the kind of over-the-top violence in most action movies that I can only describe as fantasy. Yet the ratings board seems not to take that into account, and just counts splatters of blood in a way that's taken out of context.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNLOXJw0aUUMere reproduction-level sex can ensure the survival of a community just fine. Plus, sex can quickly get communities into trouble (rivalries, mainly, also people becoming absent-minded etc).
Whether having an app that talks about positions is going to make a 13 year old (more?) sexually active is a completely different question, but compounding the two is nonsense.
There are many people in the world who use technology, but are offended by even the slightest sexual material. They might not have reasons for it that you and I would agree with, but that's beside the point. The point is that they can get very loud and insistent and they might go on TV saying that "Apple distributes smut" and whatnot. Apple wants to avoid that kind of hassle. There are different ways to do that, but the easiest for Apple is to simply reject any content they think might cause them this kind of trouble.
Ergo anything that implies that normal people can be healthy and happy and want to have sex threatens this world-view.