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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday March 07 2020, @06:26PM   Printer-friendly
from the everyone-loves-ads! dept.

Apple's new App Store policies fight spam and abuse but also allow ads in notifications:

Earlier this week, Apple notified app developers of a revised set of App Store review guidelines—the rules by which Apple curates its iOS/iPadOS, tvOS, watchOS, and macOS App Stores.

Among many other things, the revised rules expand the definition of what constitutes a spam app, clarify that developers are able to use push notifications to serve ads to users (provided users explicitly opt in to them), and limit submissions of certain types apps to trusted organizations in regulated or sensitive industries.

The most controversial of these changes has been the clear statement that developers can serve ads to users via push notifications. At one point in the past, Apple's guidelines stated that push notifications "should not be used for advertising, promotions, or direct marketing purposes or to send sensitive personal or confidential information." Now the guidelines state:

Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app's UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages.

Pixel Envy's Nick Heer noted that Apple was already failing to enforce the original language, so this seems like capitulation to what some developers have been doing for a while, perhaps in response to difficulty policing this consistently. Heer also points out that there is not currently a pre-baked way for developers to sort between types of notifications, so the "you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages" language may still curb some of this behavior.


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday March 07 2020, @06:27PM (6 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Saturday March 07 2020, @06:27PM (#967945) Journal

    App Store Guidelines ban police-spotting apps, raise bar on dating apps and more [techcrunch.com]

    The revised rule (section 1.4.4.) now says that Apple will reject apps “used to commit or attempt to commit crimes of any kind by helping users evade law enforcement,” in addition to the existing language.

    As you may recall, Apple last year got into hot water over its decision to reject a crowdsourced mapping app, HKmap, that was being used by Hong Kong pro-democracy protestors to evade police. Initially, the app had been approved, but was pulled a day after Apple was criticized by Chinese state media who said the app allowed “rioters…to go on violent acts.”

    The app had allowed users to crowdsource information like the location of police, the use of tear gas and other details about the protests, which were added to a regularly updated map. In a statement, Apple said it removed the app when it learned it was used to “target and ambush police.”

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  • (Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @07:08PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @07:08PM (#967953)

    and yet Waze will still be allowed. Because speed trap tagging, radarcam alerts, etc. is not evading law enforcement?

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @07:19PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 07 2020, @07:19PM (#967956)

    Life must be sweet!

    Do they stop and have beluga caviar for lunch?

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Grishnakh on Sunday March 08 2020, @12:57AM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Sunday March 08 2020, @12:57AM (#968032)

    There's a very simple solution to these policies by Apple: don't buy an iPhone. There's countless Android phones out there to choose from, the high-end ones all have much better cameras than the iPhone, and they generally cost a lot less too. iPhones don't even have that much marketshare worldwide; it's mostly in the US where they're so popular. The Google Play store does have a lot of garbage apps, and doesn't do that great a job keeping the spam out, but they don't keep out apps like HKmap either. And if that's not good enough, you can always use F-droid, or even load an app directly, no app store needed.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @04:05PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 09 2020, @04:05PM (#968524)

      What do better cameras on cheaper Androids have to do with Apple's push notification policy now including ads?

      I'd rather give feedback to Apple to say this is not what me the customer wants, revert this change--than to... well I dunno.

      What privacy safeguards come on Android that make the camera an important criteria to consider above push notifications that contain ads and the data collection and user profile creation that goes on to allow that to happen?