Third-Party Reddit Apps Pulled From App Store
Today, numerous third-party Reddit clients were removed from the App Store by Apple for breaching clause 18.2 of the App Review Guidelines. This clause states that apps will be rejected if they contain “user generated content that is frequently pornographic”.
The official Reddit app, which launched last week and was featured by Apple on the App Store, currently remains in the App Store, but other Reddit clients including Narwhal, Antenna, Eggplant and BaconReader have all been removed for sale. These third-party Reddit clients were removed from Apple without any advance notice to developers, despite some of the apps being available on the App Store for well over a year. It should also be noted that many of these third-party apps, such as Narwhal, did have a filter to enable or disable NSFW content.
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Some of the third-party Reddit clients have now returned to the App Store. Both Narwhal and Antenna are now available in the App Store, but both have been updated to remove the NSFW toggle that used to be in their apps. It is our understanding that Apple’s objection is with the implementation of those NSFW toggles. Apple wants them removed from all Reddit apps so that if a user does want to view NSFW content, that toggle must be manually changed from the Reddit website.
This doesn’t make much sense to me. You can make an app that browses the entire Web, but you can’t make an app that browses a single Web site? And if you have a NSFW filter, Apple wants you to go to the Web site to toggle it instead of doing so within the app? That would be like making it so that you can’t buy e-books from within a books app. Oh.
See also: Chance Miller, Husain Sumra, Harish Jonnalagadda.
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You can make an app that browses the entire Web, but you can’t make an app that browses a single Web site?
That's a little disingenuous. Reddit steers users towards exposure to pr0n a little more quickly and easily than the conventional net does, I believe. It's hard to get to pr0n from NYTimes.com (not impossible; very very difficult). Reddit? Heck, any user-generated content on a reasonably unregulated forum? I can see it.
Yes, but then Apple should be consistent in banning the Reddit app too.
Although the why behind all this is obvious. Large or prominent companies get special treatment.
