[allenbrunson]

the app was not 'censored' by apple. they are free to approve or reject any app they want, for any reason. the article posits that the author's views are being supressed, and that's just ridiculously wrong. it's like news.yc commenters having their comments [dead]ed for flaming, then claiming that they are being 'censored'.

the author is free to take that position, i guess, just as i am free to stop reading any article that talks like that.

[tjogin]

If it was rejected due to its "politically charged" content, what would be the difference between that and censorship?

[stingraycharles]

Because Apple makes it very clear in their TOS that they don't want that. And obviously, the iSinglePayer app is politically charged. The developer of the app decided to develop it anyway, and now he's claiming he's being censored.

It's kind of silly, actually. People seem to think they have some fundamental right to be approved into the AppStore, which is simply not the case.

[tjogin]

How does making something clear in a TOS not make this censorship?

Censorship, as defined by Wikipedia: "Censorship is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the government or media organizations as determined by a censor."

How is this not censorship on Apple's behalf? I'm not saying they're not in their right to censor the content on their AppStore, I'm just saying it is censorship.

[stingraycharles]

Okay, according to that definition, you may be right. Ultimately, I think it's up to a judge to decide; censorship is not as black and white.

Take Google for example. They automatically filter various type of sites from their index (phishing, link farms, etc). According to the definition on Wikipedia, that is censorship too: it's communicative material, which is considered harmful by Google.

[tjogin]

Why would the definition of the word 'censorship' be up to a judge to decide? And why would a judge be involved at all? It isn't illegal to censor something.

The fact that this is censorship doesn't mean that Apple aren't in their right to do so. They are, as much as I dislike it.

Voicing one's discontent with their policy is probably the only way we can make them change it, though.

[stingraycharles]

Ok in that case, indeed, censorship can be applied. But to me, that means it completely loses its value: in essence, it would be the same as "filtering", which I don't think is the intent of the law.

[anigbrowl]

The problem is that there are approved iPhone apps which are overtly politically charged, like this one: http://www.conservativetalkingpoints.com/

So there's obviously a double standard, though I'd guess it's at the level of individual reviewers rather than Apple policy.

[jgilliam]

An application promoting single payer health care is not even remotely comparable to a flame comment.

[allenbrunson]

but news.yc also doesn't allow political articles, for the most part, because they tend to attract unproductive arguments. i'm going to guess that's the real reason that guy's app was rejected, rather than 'censorship'.