I think the same argument could be made for Twitter/X. The app stores by Google and Apple specifically disallow pornographic material, yet the app is full of it. Once you're big and important enough, the rules mostly don't apply for you anymore. Of course, if they tried to circumvent the app store tax directly within the app, there would be consequences, but as long as Google/Apple can make a profit, it's okay it seems.
> I think the same argument could be made for Twitter/X. The app stores by Google and Apple specifically disallow pornographic material, yet the app is full of it.
Reddit is allowed too. imgur, snap, etc.
I assumed you're fine as long as your raison d'être wasn't porn and the content was user generated / supplied.
To add, Tumblr was lambasted for them not properly policing their porn[0], accidentally allowing CSAM, and Apple being the one to inform them of this error. it's what led to them banning all 18+ content, arguably sealing the platform's fate of irrelevancy.
I thought Yahoo's acquisition was what stopped their 18+ content
But perhaps the most catastrophic misfire of all was the notorious ‘porn ban’ that came into place on December 17, 2018 – a policy partly driven by a US law [1] that made websites liable for sex trafficking that might take place on their platform. The ban covers ‘female presenting nipples’, genitals, and any depicted sex acts. Until then, the platform had remained a refuge for a devoted community of users, but this decision affected swift and dire consequences.
And who determines that reason? Twitter seems to work fine with no restrictions but Discord basically has to lock down any server marked as 18+
(regardless of the content of 18+. Don't know how mobile has had 15 years to do granular content warnings based on decades of other medium but app stores still assume 18+ = porn).
Not to be too flippant, but we can guess all we want, but the individual apps signed up to specific terms at the time, and you can almost guarantee that Apple (or anyone else) reserves a lot of leeway to themselves as to how they enforce or otherwise police those T&Cs.
All the conjecture in this bit of the thread seems a bit pointless given none of us are reading it, let alone reading the specific bit that whichever app in question might be held to.
Hence my start to it, as well, these seem to be allowed ...
Can an aggregator/distributor be liable for user created content? You can find porn in Reddit or Google Search and these apps are still in the app store so I don’t think they are getting any special treatment.
Didn't work out for Organic Maps. Merely allowing to access map data makes you un-family-friendly. Or at least that's what we can assume, since Google won't indulge in specifics. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41272925
There are some protections for hosting illegal data (real illegal, not EULA-disapproved), but they tend to go away if the host does any kind of editorializing (like showing the data through an algorithmic feed).
Google Search is different yet, since they aren't the primary host.
