A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process

I don't know about these statistics, but Tumblr is definitely NSFW-only, that was the whole deal back in 2018 that got everyone angry at them. There were some other minor differences about defaults suggested in the article as well, it didn't seem especially conspiratorial.

Of course, tolerating twitter due to its size and ability to single handedly generate PR doesn't seem that conspiratorial to me. I'd be kind of surprised if that wasn't a big factor in double and quadruple checking the results before taking action instead of the reverse.

Just want to emphasize this part. App Store Reviewers are completely asinine. Like, dumb as a rock. It’d almost be funny if their stupidity didn’t block your app approval.

To be explicitly clear: if your app contains UGC, they will explicitly go and search for things to ding you on, and then fault you when you find it. They will go to the search bar and type in “milf” or “butts” (I wish I were joking). They’ll try to search for drugs on your marketplace. If your app runs scripts, they’ll try downloading something and then yell at you for letting them do it. The review messages they leave you bend over backwards to try to fault you for what they do in the app…things like “during review, your app downloaded code” (the reviewer went out of their way to find a way to load a script from the internet) or “your app presents adult content” (the reviewer created an account and immediately searched for “sex”). These are the people who misspell their demo account passwords and will claim the app is broken, so these idiots are almost proud when they find these, almost like they’re finding a gotcha.

Of course, these rejections are all bogus. In a good system they wouldn’t happen, or if they did you’d dismiss them summarily. Instead, you need to plead and escalate until you find a person who’s not a complete bozo. Sometimes, in desperation, you come up with random filters in the hopes that they’ll just leave you alone this time. Careful, though: if you give up too much ground you won’t have any to give next time.

The entire process is just designed to wear you down, to create apps that conform to a pretty image where people post about their dogs and food rather than anything that could possibly be objectionable. Platforms rightfully try to keep their own standards on their content, but many slowly give up and slide into what’s easy to defend. Apple is only behind payment processors and advertisers in forcing platforms to prude up :(

Didnt this get leaked?

Maybe that was about Facebook/Meta’s exemption of celebrity accounts

And I also might be confusing this for abuse of Apple’s enterprise signing key

Either way, small club and Tumblr aint in it

It’s very clear that the rules are arbitrary and are not enforced uniformly. Apple doesn’t even seem to have an inclination to solve issues when they’re pointed out.