Apple's Problem with Bodies
drobinin.com
drobinin.com
> The rating itself is fine: the target audience is well past that age anyway. What baffles me is the logic.
I don't mind the 18+ label, even though it's up to the users what they use the app for, whether it's tracking sex, a partner's health, or personal wellbeing.
But I do find the history of age ratings and categories in the App Store and the limits they have to be quite hilarious, and figured I might as well write them down.
Seems like people should be of whatever age we consider mature before they start capturing intimate data about themselves on random platforms. If we don’t think you’re able to understand the risks of pursuing your reproductive impulses, do we think you can measure the risks of sharing data about those impulses on a platform you don’t control?
Local data or not, if I were the steward of a marketplace I’d use that position to create this kind of teaching moment for pre-developed consumers. If young people had been warned since the mid 2000s of how much of their intimacy they were handing over to Meta, ByteDance, etc. before they started, the world would certainly be better off.
My point wasn’t about lowering the age rating. The issue is that Apple doesn’t have a real category for this kind of wellbeing at all. The age gate itself is sensible, but what’s funny is why it exists. It’s not "because we carefully considered how to protect teens’ data", it’s "because in 2009 the Store was drowning in farting apps, and we’ve been patching around that ever since."
because your blog post is, ahem rather less than persuasive
Because there's isn't really an argument innit - at least none that I took notice of. Isn't it just exploring the reasons why it is like it is today? They even made it abundantly clear in the beginning (and in the comments here) that the rating is fine for the app
And for what conceivable reason would this need to have sure underage people aren't using it?
A period tracker has relevance in the context of a sexual relationship, but there is really nothing about it that needs to be censored from underage people. It is not explicit content. It's a specialized journal, that's it
Yes, people younger than 18 engage in sex, but this has different legal consequences than for people past 18, and Apple has no interest to wade through that legal quagmire.
I would imagine that the confusion arose because they read past that sentence. You wrote that you don’t mind that the app you specifically made for adults to use got the rating that it did and then sort of talk about how you don’t find the rating system to be rational.
I couldn’t tell if the subject of this article is “I think my intimacy tracking app shouldn’t have an adult rating because a user could use it for general wellbeing” or “I don’t like Fortnite”
Once I noticed that gap, I went digging into the history to understand why the App Store age ratings and categories are the way they are, hence this archeological detour of a post.
I'm not sure what else they expected? 16+ seems appropriate to me. I can buy the argument for a need of additional categories, though.
As they raised, games with gacha mechanics and violence receive a lower rating.
I feel the complaint is less about the app receiving that rating and more the flawed logic around how they are categorized given it’s effectively a health and wellness tracker.
You can imagine why Apple takes a dim view
It has no other purpose.
It ain't livejournal, my man
An IRL analogy is probably stores that are happy to let children shop in the vicinity of sexually suggestive items such as condoms, lube, and intimate apparel—you can get these at grocery stores even.
Local data or not, if I were the steward of a marketplace I’d use that position to create this kind of teaching moment for pre-developed consumers. If young people had been warned since the mid 2000s of how much of their intimacy they were handing over to Meta, ByteDance, etc. before they started, the world would certainly be better off.
How about we just don't do that capture at all?
Condoms, lubes, and intimate apparel are not threats to children. If you found children buying condoms, lubes, or intimate apparel at unusually high rates, that would be very alarming. But, normally, they are purchasing these products for very lazy adults.
There is 0 use case for a person under the age of majority to use this application. It is only usable by a person being abused.
Precisely 0 adults have charged children with the mission of f... blogging sexual activity.
“Children buying condoms or lube at unusually high rates” is a funny phrase because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a child buy either of those things. What is the threshold between usual and unusual for these purchases in hard terms?
I aspire to your lifestyle ;)
kids buy condoms for the same reasons kids used to buy cigarettes or beer. It would be super weird to see the same neighborhood kid buy condoms every week, but it's not particularly alarming on a one-time basis.
Maybe I am just very old, and I should be alarmed by a one-time purchase. I am relating the basic guidelines from my own youth.
It is plainly a bad idea by any standard to provide an application for teenagers to keep diaries of their sexual abuse.
Not that I can think of, and I’ve worked retail. I’m assuming that ‘lazy parents’ have been buying condoms and lube online for a long time now given the selection and price points available. Like you can get a hundred pack for ~$20 which is way cheaper than what you’d get at a gas station.
Revised opinion: Maybe it should be EXTREMELY ALARMING to see a neighborhood kid make a one-time purchase of condoms or lube
edit: i have worked retail but it was 30 years ago
So it gets to the heart of what these age ratings are really for and what kind of things do we actually not want kids around. And it seems like the line is drawn at sexually explicit imagery. And so app stores in a way are kind of unique in that they apply age restrictions much more liberally than the wider world around them.
/s in case.
Not sarcasm, kids should truly just write this shit down instead of using a weird app that’s not accountable to them in any way,
How can the author complain about Apple binning this app away in a weird niche if he as its maker doesn’t have the guts to plainly say what the app actually, really does?
I miss when tech was actually fun.
This really isn't an Apple problem, but an American culture problem. This is such a common trope in many forms of media:
* You can sell games with gratuitous amount of gore, but implied clothed intercourse gets you pulled from stores.
* You can get away with a lot of violence and possible sneak a PG-13 rating, but a single boob gets you rated R.
The author has a problem because what he is selling is an app to track sexual activity in explicit detail, which is a huge privacy invasion, and Apple's normal screens are rather good at noticing that
The author of this post is trying to sell an app that is not explicitly prohibited by Apple guidelines, but it is offensive to pretty much anyone who looks at it
Do you have any better evidence? Apple's App Store screens are notoriously useless; famously, Lastpass had to tell people to stop downloading their app from the App Store after Apple's "normal screen" replaced their app with a trojan horse: https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...
it seems like you can just use existing utilities. write your journal in notes. put stuff on a calendar if you want to track dates. if you're into making pie charts, make a spreadsheet.
Maybe people need a dedicated, mobile-ready spreadsheet to track sexual partners!
but this particular blog post makes me think they need a mobile spreadsheet to track their juvenile victims
I’m very glad children won’t get their sexual activities tracked by apps tyvm
Brother, the App Store listing is literally “Silk — Intimacy and Health Log.” Followed by the screenshots titled “Pleasure Patterns,” “Love Without Limits,” and “Spice Library.”
That is not — as you say — “a wellbeing journal in the most boring possible sense.”
The problem is clearly spelled out. Apples App Store policies make it incredibly hard to create apps that fall into the grey zone.
An intimacy/sex journaling app shouldn’t be something that’s near to impossible to find on the App Store if the person searching for it is a grown adult.
And the whole “but guns are ok??” thing is so tired. Yeah, we get it, Americans are prudes and in Europe nudity is no big deal and American cheese isn’t even cheese. We get it.
Also, there is an entirely separate set of Apple content guidelines around firearms.
I think that’s very unlikely for his app.
I remember when all dating apps had to move away from nudity without obscure hacks via the web. The entire conversation about sexual health and sexuality is now political and unfortunately for teens, their access to it is severely limited by old white prudish people who can’t even imagine a relationship with more than 2 people.
It’s never about protecting children though, that’s just a good buzzword they both Apple and politicians use that resonates with their audience without too much explanation. It gives a good feeling of effective policy even if it isn’t. It’s like “wokeness”, the “problem with immigration” and now … age verification.