Apple rejects iSinglePayer iPhone App
lambdajive.wordpress.com
lambdajive.wordpress.com
Clearly there is no attempt made to assuage the notion that the application is "politically charged", with language like "The rejection of iSinglePayer from the App Store is but the latest blow to supporters of single-payer health reform" dominating. The author instead urges readers to "spread the word on Apple's censorship", which seems like a pretty blatant attempt to coerce a private enterprise to publish his political agenda. Is that really the sort of thing you want to have associated with your cause?
So while it's (as far as I know) legal for Apple to decline "politically charged" applications, just as it would be legal for them to decline applications made by Jews, I don't think it's morally justifiable. While I agree with the cause of single-payer health insurance, I would be just as upset if Apple rejected the Druge Reader or Fox News app for being "politically charged".
Just as common carriers cannot discriminate against their users, once Apple provides a channel for businesses or people to sell things to customers, their power to decide what goes or doesn't go thought that channel should be limited.
However, people generally frown upon censorship, even in private arenas where it is perfectly legal to apply censorship. This is why, I presume, the article author is throwing the C-word around which such enthusiasm.
What sort of a right. Government given? UN given. God given or some sort of other metaphysically given right? There is nothing in the definition of censorship that says it must be an unjust and indefensible violation your widely recognised right.
"Politically charged" doesn't seem like a valid reason for rejection (because by that standard, apps like Huffington Post on the left or Drudge on the right wouldn't have a place in the app store)
I hope Apple reverses its decision (and I also hope that the rejection was an unintentional mistake)
He got a response: "Even though my personal political leanings are democratic, I think this app will be offensive to roughly half our customers. What’s the point?
Steve"
http://www.juggleware.com/blog/2008/09/steve-jobs-writes-bac...
There must be a way to stop this rejection-crazyness.
You cannot count on people behaving this way, least of all when it comes to politics.
There must be a way to stop this rejection-crazyness.
Broad rejection under the banner of "politically charged" is probably the most sane solution for Apple. The more they permit, the greater the backlash over any particular rejection, and the more their permission would be construed as endorsement.
For instance, suppose a pro-life and pro-choice application are both approved for the store, but one (it doesn't matter which) is only approved with a higher age limitation than the other due to content. Even if Apple's rating approval were completely consistent with other applications, the discrepancy between these two is practically guaranteed to cause a shitstorm. Multiply that by every other axis of approval or rejection and every other political issue in every country Apple runs a store.
Drive down a road... See a billboard that you don't agree with... Offended!
The "fk Jesus" group on Facebook... Offended!
I usually only tend to get offended when someone is trying to offend me directly. But other people are not so liberal with their egos.
For what it's worth, though, there's a ton of apps that are more politically charged (IMO) that were accepted - as an example, Conservative Talking Points is pretty bad.
i appreciate the article's submitter removing the editorial slant in the original headline, but that doesn't improve the content, i'm afraid.
the author is free to take that position, i guess, just as i am free to stop reading any article that talks like that.
It's kind of silly, actually. People seem to think they have some fundamental right to be approved into the AppStore, which is simply not the case.
Censorship, as defined by Wikipedia: "Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor."
How is this not censorship on Apple's behalf? I'm not saying they're not in their right to censor the content on their AppStore, I'm just saying it is censorship.
Take Google for example. They automatically filter various type of sites from their index (phishing, link farms, etc). According to the definition on Wikipedia, that is censorship too: it's communicative material, which is considered harmful by Google.
The fact that this is censorship doesn't mean that Apple aren't in their right to do so. They are, as much as I dislike it.
Voicing one's discontent with their policy is probably the only way we can make them change it, though.
No, censorship is not illegal. Freedom of speech protects your right to speak without getting silenced or punished for it (with some limits, like hate speech) by the government.
But your freedom of speech does not imply that you are free to express anything in any private arena. For instance, on this board we are not allowed to use inflammatory language or basically be douches in any way. This does not conflict with freedom of speech, because you are free to express your inflammatory opinions somewhere else, like on your own blog or in your own kitchen.
Freedom of speech does not give you the right to publicize anything on any private platform anywhere (like the App Store).
Guess my interpretation for the word always was wrong. I figured censorship meant the act of limiting freedom of speech; you seem to define censorship as any act of filtering.
Would you classify Google's filtering of web content as censorship ? If not, how is that different from Apple filtering AppStore applications ?
> Okay, so if I understand you correctly, freedom of speech is violated by censorship, but censorship doesn't always violate freedom of speech.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Although I don't think it's called just "censorship" when, for instance, an oppressive government puts people in jail, or put them to death, for saying things the government doesn't like.
Freedom of speech has absolutely nothing to do, what so ever, with private arenas. You are not protected by freedom of speech in a private arena, at all. Apple is censoring their App Store content, and they are within their legal right to do so.
Generally speaking, although it is completely legal to censor content in a private arena, it is sort of frowned upon by its community. Usually. I think this is why the iPhone developer is crying foul, using the word "censorship", because people frown upon that practice.
So there's obviously a double standard, though I'd guess it's at the level of individual reviewers rather than Apple policy.