Apple pulls 'intifada' app
Developer guidelines to the rescue
Apple has removed an Arabic ‘intifada’ app from its iTunes store in response to a complaint from the Israeli government.
The Israeli Public Diplomacy Minister Yuli-Yoel Edelstein wrote to Steve Jobs expressing concerns that the app, ThirdIntifada, accessed content that, he alleged, incites violence against Israel, Reuters reports.
The app tracks content from 3rdintifada.com, a Palestinian website that reports strong opinions and related activities concerning the issues in that region. It's all in Arabic, but this Google translated page conveys the flavour of its content.
Today, the Thirdintifada app is missing in action, for reasons an Apple spokesman explained yesterday: “We removed this app from the App Store because it violates the developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people,” according to the New York Times.
This is not the first time Apple has used its developer guidelines to purge products that generate unwelcome publicity. A Christian ‘gay cure’ app was also outed after the company received a petition of 150,000 signatures from gay rights groups. ®
COMMENTS
Double standards?
There are official apps for a number of Israeli government agencies and newspapers that consistently support ethnic cleansing, illegal settlements, morally indefensible barriers, blockades, discrimination, etc. Given that a far larger number of people would find them offensive (most Arabs, most Muslims, and many, many others) than the narrow subset of Israelis and their apologists that would claim the 3rd Intifada app as offensive, are Apple going to pull those apps?
(I read the 3rd Intifada site translation, and as far as I can see it seems to be advocating peaceful protest).
FOX?
http://www.reghardware.com/Design/graphics/icons/comment/trollface_32.png So, Apple will be pulling Fox news apps? Those incite hatred and violence against anyone who isn't a heterosexual white middle class american male (or Sarah Palin)..
You don't even need the dev kit...
1) Settings > Applications > check Unknown Sources
2) Download and open .apk file
3) There is no step 3
Routing around censorship.
You don't need a "market" to sideload an app on Android. You can just use the development kit for that. Depending on what phone you have, that might just be the easiest approach anyways.
Well thank Zarquan
for censorship!
Makes me proud to know that I at least had enough (HTC) sense not to go and get the latest iCrap Device from his Holiness.
Perhaps they'd have had more luck using Android, then at least if Google pulled it you could hav just placed it on One of the many other "Markets" that are available on Android.
