Apple lashes out at iPhone porn app maker and the EU rules allowing its download | Hacker News Reader

Apple lashes out at iPhone porn app maker and the EU rules allowing its download

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18 pointsJumpCrisscross30 comments

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Last time I checked porn was legal in the US. Who made Apple the arbitrator of what we can and can not do?

Yes, I know, private cooperation can decide what they want to do but once you get to a point of monopoly these rules should change.

Visa/Master card have the same issue.

Yeah but remember kids "regulations = evil". If apple was forced to allow porn what's next? We'd probably end up in a communist dictatorship or something equally terrible

I don't get why they don't just slap an adult age (varies by jurisdiction) and sensitive content gates on it and be done with it. Some people who are of legal age want sensitive content apps and web stuff and others don't want to see any of it. Let users decide. Default it to sensitive content off. Problem solved. We can all go home now. :)

Why doesn’t Wal-Mart sell porn?

Why do they get to be the arbiter of what I can and can’t do?

In this case, it's Walmart telling the shop down the street they shouldn't be allowed to sell porn because someone might read it while wearing a Walmart t-shirt.

Well it’s more like a vendor comes in and sets up shop in Wal-Mart to sell products because the government mandates it, and now that vendor is selling porn.

You buy the phone from Apple. Ostensibly this means you own it. Why then is it them setting up shop in Walmart, and not setting up shop in the mall you own and bought?

Yep, and you can do anything you want to it! That doesn't mean that Apple or Nintendo or Steam has to do things that support your specific use case. Of course governments can regulate things, but that applies to any industry or product.

> Malls

The mall analogy doesn't work well because Apple isn't a mall in this case but more like a Wal-Mart. They aim to own the entire experience including the distribution of applications on the device. In the mall analogy Apple would own the mall and then each store could be viewed as an app that they allow in the mall.

Malls also limit what stores/apps can operate in them and have lots of rules. Where I live one of our more prominent malls requires tenants who are renting space at the mall to completely refresh the space or vacate after a certain number of years. Malls can arbitrarily raise rent and operating fees on the various shops within them too.

The owner of the mall/phone gets to choose the stores in it. So Apple gets to have a store, and they get to choose not to sell porn apps, but there's the European store in the mall, and it seems they're a bit different and they choose to sell porn apps.

Sure you own an iPhone and you can choose to do whatever you want to it. That doesn't mean Apple has to support it outside of whatever the government mandates.

I'm not following your point now on the analogy. I thought we were talking about Apple and not individuals?

Walmart isn’t the only store.

Is the iPhone the only mobile phone?

Yes it pretty much is. This is why your comparison doesn’t work that well. Also in a physical store you can’t shield the rest of the customers from the content some want but others don’t. So your companies no sense really.

> Also in a physical store you can’t shield the rest of the customers from the content some want but others don’t. So your companies no sense really.

Sure you can. In Ohio the state controls liquor distribution so if you want to buy liquor at a grocery store you have to go into a separate area. Rated M games (when I was growing up at least) were locked in special cases. Sometimes truck stop stations sell pornography and it's behind the counter with a cover on it.

> Yes it pretty much is.

It's not.

>The company lashed out again in its latest statement, saying it’s “deeply concerned about the safety risks that hardcore porn apps of this type create for EU users, especially kids.”

I like how Apple always conveniently forgets that Safari exists when making claims like this.

Both Jobs and Cook have mentioned/acknowledged in interviews that people who want it can use Safari.

Right, because of course children are incapable of browsing the web.

Any teenager looking for porn find a way to gets porn. Nothing can stop them.

Are you not capable of imaging how ease of access and availability increases use?

What's easier: opening the browser and searching for porn, or installing a third party app marketplace, going into the settings to enable it, finding a .json document for a source that has a porn app and adding it to the app marketplace, then downloading the porn app?

on my little kids devices, safari is blocked with built in parental controls. this isn't difficult

Built-in parental controls can also block kids from installing apps from alternative app stores.

Puritanism exposing monopolistic control over distribution channels.

The puritanism here is more an excuse than the cause.

i wonder if it’s not related with what caused reddit to ban its porn subreddits. maybe some hidden request from the trump administration?..

What do you mean by "it"? The Apple App Store banned porn from the beginning in 2008, but Apple was required by the Digital Markets Act to allow this app to be distributed outside the App Store in the European Union. That's it, the whole story. I'm not sure why you're trying to introduce some strange conspiracy involving Trump.

ok, it’s the “1st” such app, i missed that

Reddit has not banned its porn subreddits.

It did a 'test' yesterday with a mass ban then an un-ban.

I'll bet it does happen after they have evaluated their 'test'.

When money outweighs being progressive for money

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