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A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process

sreegs.tumblr.com

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Re: A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process

#41

Post by mattigames »

thewebcount wrote: post #40
saagarjha wrote: post #16

> In the case of Tumblr, this would be a reviewer going to search, typing in something like 'tits’ and finding porn. 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…

> 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. I don’t understand why you think that’s dumb. This is what people who download the app will do, so they’re trying out real scenarios that will happen. They don’t want to have there be a segment on the nightly news saying, “App Store Full of Porn!” Which is what will happen in the…

Why would the news say that app store is full of porn when you search it on Tumblr but not when you search it on Reddit? If they let at least one company do it it does seem kind of dumb.

Re: A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process

#42

Post by 1123581321 »

mattigames wrote: post #41
thewebcount wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I don’t understand why you think that’s dumb. This is what people who download the app will do, so they’re trying out real scenarios that will happen. They don’t want to have there be a segment on the nightly news saying, “App Store Full of Porn!” Which is what will happen in the…

Why would the news say that app store is full of porn when you search it on Tumblr but not when you search it on Reddit? If they let at least one company do it it does seem kind of dumb.

I don't know about tumblr, but reddit doesn't allow nsfw subs out of the box on mobile, and for logged in users, you have to explicitly enable it.

Obviously you can still find nsfw content on reddit that isn't labeled as such, so beyond that, it's probably up to the developer's soft skills. reddit probably has some people who are good at framing the app in communication with review, escalating review decisions, and communicating content policies in a way that makes them seem consistent and trustworthy.

I don't know about tumblr, but unfortunately, I don't think many indie apps with user-generated content would have the bandwidth to develop the same relationship with app stores. So there is some de facto gatekeeping happening that benefits the largest and most well-spoken social networks.

Re: A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process

#43

Post by sudosysgen »

thewebcount wrote: post #40
saagarjha wrote: post #16

> In the case of Tumblr, this would be a reviewer going to search, typing in something like 'tits’ and finding porn. 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…

> 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. I don’t understand why you think that’s dumb. This is what people who download the app will do, so they’re trying out real scenarios that will happen. They don’t want to have there be a segment on the nightly news saying, “App Store Full of Porn!” Which is what will happen in the…

That doesn't make sense to me. The iPhone comes with a web browser. If a user wants milfs and butts they can put that in the address bar.

Re: A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process

#44

Post by suction »

Does Tumblr have to be an app for any non-marketing reason?

If your website allows upload of porn, let it live in on the free internet as long as we still have it and don't waste resources on making it an "app". Problem solved. If that eats into your returns in a significant way, you don't have a viable business model.

Re: A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process

#45

Post by vulvahalla »

I made a satire game about Trump a few years ago. It got banned so many times from the AppStore and I had to write in long messages explaining how they are imposing their wrong interpretations onto my work and it took several weeks of messaging back and forth with them until they understood. They forced me to remove content from the app that I saw on Twitter using the iOS Twitter app. They did not force Twitter to remove the content. They banned my game for being pornographic because one of the mini games was called ‘Make Ivanka come’ but in the game you just had to call Ivanka to the president’s desk to get professional advice. The purpose of this obviously being satire to remind people how screwed up things are. Banning satire is like 1984, but banning porn also is in my opinion. At the same time the BBC runs reports about kids using Instagram to sell drugs which can cause actual harm. How can this be?

Re: A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process

#46

Post by danjac »

thewebcount wrote: post #40
saagarjha wrote: post #16

> In the case of Tumblr, this would be a reviewer going to search, typing in something like 'tits’ and finding porn. 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…

> 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. I don’t understand why you think that’s dumb. This is what people who download the app will do, so they’re trying out real scenarios that will happen. They don’t want to have there be a segment on the nightly news saying, “App Store Full of Porn!” Which is what will happen in the…

Why not just stick on an NSFW warning and restrict downloads for minors, and maybe treat your adult users as adults?

Re: A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process

#47

Post by travisd »

suction wrote: post #44

Does Tumblr have to be an app for any non-marketing reason? If your website allows upload of porn, let it live in on the free internet as long as we still have it and don't waste resources on making it an "app". Problem solved. If that eats into your returns in a significant way, you don't have a viable business model.

> If that eats into your returns in a significant way, you don't have a viable business model

A viable business model is one where, by definition, consumers will purchase your thing at levels that are sustainable. People use apps more than they use web browsers for the most part. Tumblr has to build what people want.

Re: A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process

#48

Post by tomduncalf »

snyp wrote: post #39
djrockstar1 wrote: post #30

It's appalling to me that iOS developers still exist after all the hoops you have to jump through to get an iOS app out. I'm a web developer that got roped into developing and then publishing a react native app for android and iOS. The android process was relatively painless compared to the crap Apple has you do. For starters, you can't even produce an app build without running on iOS, so the company had to procure a…

Building reactnative apps is time consuming because of the library and it’s dependencies. Native compile times are much faster.

Can confirm this is true, however you should find that subsequent compiles are much quicker unless you’re doing something unusual.

If you’re just changing JavaScript it should be more or less instant (you may not even need to recompile, hit R in the packager console or use hot reloading). If you add a new native dependency or change some native code, it will have to recompile any affected parts of the code but you should still see much quicker compile times than from a clean state.

Re: A Tumblr developer on the App Store approval process

#49

Post by artpi »

Another Tumblr dev here:

That's not even going into the monetization pieces. As we are implementing tipping and multi-merchant subscriptions in Post+, we still have to use In-App-Purchases with it's severely lacking API.

The hoops we have to go through to get money from our App Store account to merchants are insane. We are using Stripe Connect infrastructure and Payouts API to do that, and that would be totally fine, as well as taking the fee hit.

The most insane thing is that the subscriber can be in a number of countries, where Apple fees differ (as they contain tax). But the webhook does not contain this information, so we had to reverse engineer the whole Apple pricing matrix and the fee calculation for each subscriber to know what portion to forward onto the Stripe account, and so on and so on.

It's been a ride.

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