My title may have been somewhat misleading. Yes, I did do more secondary research on the real motive behind Apple’s banning of “overly sexual content”, but “squashing the weak” has more to do with the lack of response I have gotten from Apple.
The first thing I did was I went to the Developer Forum under Apple’s Support page. In the Apple’s developers support forum, I was unable to find any questions or discussion surrounding Apple’s banning of sexual content-related apps or any apps for that matter. I cannot say for sure, but I am leaning towards concluding that Apple may have removed these posts or discussions for the sake of making this matter more down-low and under-the-cover. I cannot imagine that nobody has asked a question regarding this matter. So I dug a little deeper. Let’s try to ask a question myself. Well, as soon as I tried to post something to the forum, I got to the “Apple Discussion User Agreement“. Typically, I would ignore something like this and just click agree and move on. But WAIT! Let’s read a bit deeper into what can be discussed on this forum. Under Section 2: Submission, Apple Discussions is here to help people use Apple products and technologies more effectively. Unless otherwise noted, do not add Submissions about nontechnical topics, including:…2. Discussions of Apple policies or procedures or speculation on Apple decisions.” In other words, I am not allowed to post anything or ask questions about why Apple is banning sexual apps from the App Store, or what the boundary is. It also states in the earlier part of the agreement that “Apple retains the right, but not the responsibility, to edit or remove any Submission, including those deemed by Apple to violate the Agreement.” In other words, what I thought previously was true. Even if a person was able to successfully post a question regarding Apple’s decision or policy without getting it banned, it WILL get erased by Apple.
Discouraged by running to one dead end, I decided to go Apple’s iPhone Dev Center. This really confused me. It seemed like the site was really for developers (as it should be) and included mostly technical information regarding coding and programming. I looked around for anything involving content restriction or what sort of content is allowed, but failed to find any information regarding this. So it seems that my second stop got me nowhere as well. Perhaps an information is hidden deeply in that pile of instructions and guidelines about programming, but it is so well hidden that I cannot actually reach for it. It’s almost like a hidden treasure.
So I thought let’s contact Apple directly. I went to Apple’s “Contact Us” page. There is no contact number or e-mail for developer’s or about App Store specifically. The only one that seemed even remotely close, was “U.S. iPhone technical support”. I called the number, but apparently you need to own an iPhone to get to talk to representative, because it told me to enter a case number or iPhone number.
Looking around blogsphere, I was able to find what the e-mail that bans an app looks like:
The App Store continues to evolve, and as such, we are constantly refining our guidelines. Your application, Wobble iBoobs (Premium Uncensored), contains content that we had originally believed to be suitable for distribution. However, we have recently received numerous complaints from our customers about this type of content, and have changed our guidelines appropriately.
We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application.
Thank you for your understanding in this matter. If you believe you can make the necessary changes so that Wobble iBoobs (Premium Uncensored) complies with our recent changes, we encourage you to do so and resubmit for review.
Sincerely,
iPhone App Review
So this is not something that was set up “originally”, but only implemented and enforced recently. Actually what is more odd is that by digging around I was able to find out that Apple did ban such Apps in the beginning, but changed their stance and decided to be more open and flexible about such boundaries. This is very concerning because it doesn’t just show that Apple changed their decision on what they define as appropriate, but their definition can be flexible to best serve them.
So in conclusion, I ended up running in circles in my personal research to contact Apple directly or find something about from them. Meanwhile, after running into dead ends, I had my friend who actually works for a company that develops games for iPhone to contact Apple directly. I will include this information in my wrap-up post on Monday if I hear something back.