The world's first $1 trillion company, Apple Inc., has supposedly made a serious violation of its own user protection policy in a recent attempt to ban apps with illegal online gambling activity from the App Store. According to the affected developers, the purge has accidentally shut down a lot of apps that have nothing to do with gambling or any fraudulent activity.
The crackdown removed a Polish magazine, a gif-sharing service and a portal for sending clips of Xbox games. Apple said that bringing down all gambling-related apps is in compliance with the government’s demands to fight illegal, gaming which was also implemented in Norway a couple of weeks ago. Still, it seems that a large portion of apps was taken down by a mistake, and some are coming back online.
As specified on Twitter, the tech giant from Cupertino removed a lot of apps from the App Store without warning. Although the users aren’t economically dependent on different or similar services, some companies might have suffered a significant loss in revenues during the 24-hour ban. The Polish iMagazine, whose central topics cover lifestyle and technology is among the affected businesses that got removed from sale on August 9th.
After the approval of the company’s 3.0 update, the following message from Apple was immediately received:
“In order to reduce fraudulent activity on the App Store and comply with government requests to address illegal online gambling activity, we are no longer allowing gambling apps submitted by individual developers. This includes both real money gambling apps as well as apps that simulate a gambling experience.”
In a short interview with one of the leading media platforms of today, a Copenhagen-based developer, Simon Stovring, said that Apple either made a huge mistake or uses cutting-edge detection systems to reveal potential connections to gambling. Although it seems like an error, it is highly unlikely that their developers would allow a serious oversight, added Stovring.
Unfortunately, it remains unknown how many apps were caught in the crossfire, but it seems that services with access to the wider Internet are the most problematic. Their protocol allows users to eventually wander off and click on gambling ads, meaning that developers will have their hands full before getting back online. The ban lasted approximately 15 hours and it caused a lot of angry comments on social media.
Source:
“Apple removes 'wrong apps' in gambling purge”, Chris Baraniuk, bbc.co.uk, August 9, 2018.