27 ms·

“Apps intended for kids may not include third-party advertising or analytics”

1179 points by donohoe 7y ago

joshstrange 7y ago
Here is the whole section > 1.3 Kids Category > The Kids Category is a great way for people to easily find apps that are designed for children. If you want to participate in the Kids Category, you should focus on creating a great experience specifically for younger users. These apps must not include links out of the app, purchasing opportunities, or other distractions to kids unless reserved for a designated area behind a parental gate. Keep in mind that once customers expect your app to follow the Kids Category requirements, it will need to continue to meet these guidelines in subsequent updates, even if you decide to deselect the category. Learn more about parental gates. > Apps in the Kids Category may not include third-party advertising or analytics. You should also pay particular attention to privacy laws around the world relating to the collection of data from children online. Be sure to review the Privacy section of these guidelines for more information. It appears to only apply to apps in the "Kids Category" so Candy Crush and the like can just say they are "adult"/not-kid-games and continue to be used by kids (while showing them ads and tracking them).
- criddell 7y ago
  Why do they ban third-party advertising in particular? It seems like advertising should be allowed as long as it's display only with no outward information flow. Basically ads equivalent OTA television or magazine ads should be allowed.
  - m-p-3 7y ago
    Most likely to limit and control the ability to track this category of users.
  - RickS 7y ago
    Presumably because third party insertion doesn't give the app creators sufficient control over what's shown. This happens all the time. Forbes.com starts serving malware and then cry "we didn't know! the third party guys just put whatever in that box!" So it's not (just) the outward flow of information, but the additional policing burden of a separate inward flow of graphics.
    - criddell 7y ago
      That makes a lot of sense.
  - lozenge 7y ago
    Because no ad network is trustworthy. It avoids stories like "developer's labour of love banned over ad network that resold space to ad network that resold space to ad network that put an inappropriate ad".
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Marco Arment created his own ad platform that he curates for the Overcast podcast player partially for that reason and he didn't want random binary blobs shipping with his code.
    - astrodust 7y ago
      "Developer's labor of love taken over by a publisher that got acquired by Evil Corp which allowed anyone to buy ads on their platform."
  - mithr 7y ago
    In general, I believe it's based on the belief that children in partiular don't yet have the necessary mental tools to be able to properly analyze content -- basically, that they're influenced by media to a much higher degree than adults. > Basically ads equivalent OTA television or magazine ads should be allowed I would guess that proponents of this approach also feel that the contents of TV/magazine ads should be strictly controlled (and probably they are -- I'm not sure what the exact regulations around these are, but I am sure it's much harder to publish a blatantly misleading magazine or TV ad, without consequences to the advertiser or the network/magazine, than it is to publish one online).
    - snek 7y ago
      Not just a belief, it's been studied many times, and it is in fact illegal to have "native" advertising on children's TV shows, at least in the U.S.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        Almost all cartoons aimed at kids hope to make money on related merchandise. A lot of animated shows were cancelled because while the ratings were good, they skewed toward older teens and adults that didn't buy toys. Two that come to mind are "Young Justice" and the original "Teen Titans". Cartoon Network specifically made "Teen Titans Go!" to skew younger. This isn't a new thing, they killed off most of the Transformers in the 80s movie so they could introduce a new line of characters/toys.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - eli 7y ago
      Then why are first-party ads allowed?
      - pwinnski 7y ago
        I hope this is step one, and that first-party ads are step two or three.
  - lotu 7y ago
    I'm interpreting this as third party targeting, not that you can't use a third party handle the process of targeting, serving, and billing ads. If they are saying that the game company has to have their own ad platform that basically means only Google and Facebook will be able to release ad supported child targeted games on iOS in the future, which doesn't really make any sense to me.
    - pwinnski 7y ago
      If they choose to interpret the rule as "no ad-supported child-targeted games on iOS, period," that sounds good to me. I hope they do.
  - nkrisc 7y ago
    Honestly all advertising targeted to children should be banned. It's just not fair. Children don't stand a chance against marketing crafted by adults. You're pitting the mind of a child against that of a trained, professional, adult marketer. The kid is their clay to be molded.
    - gameswithgo 7y ago
      adults don't stand a chance either.
    - majewsky 7y ago
      > Children don't stand a chance against marketing crafted by adults. Nobody can stand a chance against someone well-versed in applied psychology (i.e. a marketer).
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Especially that it's really you vs. a whole industry of well-paid professionals weaponizing psychological research.
      - repolfx 7y ago
        The fact that so much advertising barely works is the basis of Google's entire business model. The idea that adverts are all made by masters of psychological manipulation is laughable - most of it is considered successful of it just manages to get the name noticed and remembered at all.
    - AJ007 7y ago
      This seems to be getting missed, but those kids apps are serving ads for adults. Google has gone way out of their way to make it confusing to block mobile ads (you used to have to add a blacklist domain.) Last year they removed support for that and required advertisers to check an option within the ad campaign. Earlier this year they removed that option. This is a win for advertisers, a loss for publishers and ad networks making money from mis-targeted ads.
    - kalleboo 7y ago
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    Children are not mature enough to understand that advertisements are lies meant to sell products, and can believe the content of the advertisements are true. This is harmful to society, particularly as young children are not capable of making purchasing decisions anyways - this is adversarial brainwashing of the most vulnerable.
    - criddell 7y ago
      That's true of advertising in general and not third party advertising in particular. Somebody else posted what I think is the correct answer - it removes the possibility of a third party showing inappropriate content to kids.
  - lathiat 7y ago
    It sounds simple but one of the biggest frustrations is that kids accidentally click the ads which take you out of the app into something else. And constantly get confused. Hence it also requires the apps not to have external links etc.
- lotu 7y ago
  Obviously, but where do you want to go with that? Are you suggesting that because kids can use any app on a phone that all tracking and ads should be banned?
  - lukevdp 7y ago
    No, looks like it is just the apps targeted at kids.
  - Kluny 7y ago
    iPhones have kids mode that prevents the kid from using any app on the phone. That will probably only deter toddlers, but it's something.
    - xoa 7y ago
      >That will probably only deter toddlers Is this actually true? Jailbreaks haven't been persistent in the face of updates in a long while, so for devices kept up to date it's possible to lock down an iPhone fairly hard. I haven't investigated how parent control compares to full MDM, but the supervision capabilities now in iOS [1] are pretty powerful. For better and for worse of course, that kind of control over user devices, particularly in the context of parents and children, is definitely a double edged sword. But compared to typical computers I don't think it should be lightly dismissed either as something kids can just get around. They aren't open systems. ---- 1: https://www.apple.com/business/resources/docs/Managing_Devices_and_Corporate_Data_on_iOS.pdf https://www.apple.com/business/resources/docs/Managing_Devic...
      - Kluny 7y ago
        I figure older kids can use tactics like social hacking -- ie, whine at mom until she unlocks it.
  - colechristensen 7y ago
    I think where it is going is just fine. The reduction of tracking and ads is a good thing, but that there is going to be a FAANG that is explicitly encouraging this is great news. I would prefer if the market itself forced out tracking and ads. Provide a space for it and that space can compete with everything else and if we're lucky will wildly outcompete the competition. This is the kind of walled garden I want to see. One with high walls and a door.
- lallysingh 7y ago
  Yup, and parents can just install one of the Kids-Category clones of candy crush that will inevitably show up.
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    Which will include no ads, so: yay! Mission accomplished.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      No third-party ads.
      - soulofmischief 7y ago
        So what services are exempt from this ban? Does Apple offer a first-party advertisement plugin?
        Gaelan 7y ago
        Not anymore, IIRC. Presumably, app developers would be allowed to sell their own ads in some fashion.
        Intermernet 7y ago
        If the app developer has 3rd party advertising clients can they sell those ads? What about "affiliate" ads? Where is the line here?
- move-on-by 7y ago
  > Keep in mind that once customers expect your app to follow the Kids Category requirements, it will need to continue to meet these guidelines in subsequent updates, even if you decide to deselect the category. I love this. You can't just follow kids guidelines to build up your user-base and then drop it in favor of ads and analytics. Once you follow it, you have to continue to follow it.
  - stcredzero 7y ago
    This is more proof that apps and games are just another form of media. There are the same issues and conundrums dealing with children's media, as there are for books and television. I wish there would appear a 2019 version of Children's Television Workshop which would produce wonderful media for the children of today. (Is it already happening in some form?)
    - dole 7y ago
      Pretty much PBS Kids, "wonderful" being subjective in both directions, like anything.
      - move-on-by 7y ago
        PBS Kids includes 3rd party analytics
        stcredzero 7y ago
        Whether something is the cultural successor to CTW isn't so much about the brand name. It's about quality, artistic integrity, and mission.
    - draw_down 7y ago
      Ok sure, apps fit within the category of “media”. Was there contention on that point?
    - Angostura 7y ago
      BBC CBeebies and CBBC is pretty goodd for kids programmes.
- mc32 7y ago
  YouTube would be well advised to follow this model for videos intended for kids and anything on YouTube Kids outside of iOS.
  - jeffwass 7y ago
    On YouTube it’s not just the presence of ads that’s the problem, it’s the type of ads. My kids were watching an obviously kids-themed kids-friendly YouTube video and were shown an ad for Walking Dead, with graphic scary zombies. My 4yo was covering her eyes in fear. Like WTF Google.
    - tcfunk 7y ago
      Yeah I actually stopped allowing YouTube and YouTube Kids. YouTube has inappropriate ads, and YouTube Kids content is basically half ads in disguise (just people advertising toys and how they work).
      - braythwayt 7y ago
        Why can't things be like the Good Old Days when Raganwald was young. We watched Saturday Morning Cartoons, not played with apps. Hmmm... Now that I think about it, Saturday Morning Cartoons were filled with advertising for sugar and violent toys, some of which was clearly labeled as advertising.
        robryan 7y ago
        Guess the experience varies country to country but at least they generally reserved selling for the ad breaks. Unlike say a paid unboxing video.
        darkpuma 7y ago
        By the 80s to 90s, a lot of popular kids shows were glorified ads for toy lines. For instance, 'Transformers' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers.
- jasonhong 7y ago
  Here is some past work from our research group on a machine learning classifier to identify apps for kids. http://www.cmuchimps.org/publications/identifying_and_analyzing_the_privacy_of_apps_for_kids_2016 http://www.cmuchimps.org/publications/identifying_and_analyz... The title, app description, screenshots, and icon give a lot of signals as to whether an app is targeting kids or not. In particular, icons and screenshots that use a lot of primary colors was a pretty good signal, though app description was the best feature.
- HyperTalk2 7y ago
  These apps will be nearly impossible to monetize. No ads, but also basically no in-app purchases either. I doubt many children will see a parental gate and actually do what it asks. They'll just treat it like a dead-end and close the app to find something else to play with. This category will be entirely populated by totally free apps that are created solely for branding purposes or funded by NGOs to push an agenda, with a very small number of apps created by uncompromised people who sincerely want to make the world a better place for children.
  - chii 7y ago
    > nearly impossible to monetize. No ads, but also basically no in-app purchases either. How about a paid app? Charge what it costs to create once. The old model worked fine before the advent of IAP and adware. If the app is good, people would pay for it. Esp. if now there's a specific category for discovery!
    - Mirioron 7y ago
      There's a disconnect between who plays/uses the app and who pays. How do you know that it's worth the money if you're not going to play it?
      - petre 7y ago
        Make the first level free, charge for subsequent levels.
        repolfx 7y ago
        That would require in-app purchases, no?
        petre 7y ago
        Or a free/paid app pair. Think old shareware games from the '90s, for example Doom2 1.9 shareware.
chillydawg 7y ago
If I were apple I'd extend the definition of a kids app as any app thats userbase is kids by majority. Not sure how to enforce or detect that, though!
- Spooks 7y ago
  This seems more like an opt in choice for developers of the app as opposed to forcing apps to the kids section (which as you stated would be impossible to manage)
- djanogo 7y ago
  The screen time feature lets parents control kids iPhones/iPads through content ratings, I am sure it would be relatively easy to extend it to kids feature. Also kids Apple ID would have the age info.
- MBCook 7y ago
  > Keep in mind that once customers expect your app to follow the Kids Category requirements, it will need to continue to meet these guidelines in subsequent updates, even if you decide to deselect the category. Sounds like they’re ready.
- mehh 7y ago
  Simple, use analytics ;)
Rebelgecko 7y ago
Are first party ads better for kids?
- eli 7y ago
  Likewise are first-party analytics better than Google Analytics? Some people definitely think so
- Townley 7y ago
  I think so. Among other reasons, those ads were deliberately included in the app by the people who created it (and now have explicit responsibility over the content of those ads). Since parents trusted those creators enough to give the app to their children, that's something.
- vilhelmen 7y ago
  I'm curious what keeps "first party" analytics/ads just phoning home and doing the third-party transaction server-side.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    Apple's banhammer, should the public ever catch you in the act. (I guess.)
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
      And their ban hammer is not terribly sophisticated either. They find one ad that is the same, or similar to, an ad being served someplace else and WHAM! Unless you've got money to burn, don't try to be nickel slick with Apple. Learned that the hard way.
- pier25 7y ago
  What defines first or third party?
  - pwinnski 7y ago
panpanna 7y ago
Google please steal this idea. Edit: current policy is "Ads in your app that are served to children need to be appropriate and served from an ads network that has certified compliance with our families policies." See https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/building-safer-google-play-for-kids.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/building-s...
- duxup 7y ago
  Considering the state of the play store and such ... probably nobody is paying attention.
  - panpanna 7y ago
    A year ago I would have agreed but a lot has happened lately. Play store went from 3.2m to 2.6m apps last year. When it comes to rejecting apps that violate their tos they are pretty trigger happy.
    - duxup 7y ago
      I feel like they're trigger happy... but via automation and scripts that I'm not sure are getting that much. Like the volume is down, but for all I know it's just the same actors getting the same stuff out there. It's really hard to tell.
      - panpanna 7y ago
        I thick they are starting to do some good. For what it's worth, Apple QA is also mostly automated.
        duxup 7y ago
        It would be interesting to know how Apple's automation works as the impression (may not be accurate) is their approval or denying is a bit more precise.
    - 7y ago
pnutjam 7y ago
That's great, except there is no way to create a "kids" account without another apple device. My kids school won't participate in the program to create kids accounts for schools, and I don't own other apple devices. So on my rented ipad, the only option is to create a 13+ year old account (for my kindergartner). So now that she's in 2nd grade, apple thinks she's 16. I've complained about this endlessly to the school, and talked to a couple lawyers. Apparently there is no legal issue because I have to create the accounts, so they are my accounts. I'm just letting my kid use them. So... apple sucks, give us a web-ui for creating child accounts. I don't mind having a parent account, but you cannot have family accounts without an Ipad or some other apple device, and a single ipad is a single user device.
- simongr3dal 7y ago
  I'm no expert on family accounts but can't you set all that stuff up via macOS on a virtual machine? Or does it actually require iOS?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - pnutjam 7y ago
    I've never tried to run MacOS on a virtual machine. I'm assuming you can't get a license for that, so it wouldn't be an "official" solution, but do you have a link?
    - simongr3dal 7y ago
      https://techsviewer.com/install-macos-10-14-mojave-virtualbox-windows/ https://techsviewer.com/install-macos-10-14-mojave-virtualbo... The link has a guide on how to configure virtualbox to run macOS. They also have some links to the macOS installer, but there are also plenty of torrents around with disk images of macOS.
- gridlockd 7y ago
  > I don't mind having a parent account, but you cannot have family accounts without an Ipad or some other apple device, and a single ipad is a single user device. You can't just log in to the ipad with a parent account, create a child account, log out, then log back in with the child account?
lallysingh 7y ago
This is the first thing I've seen Apple do that actually makes me happy about them. I haven't considered one of their products in years.
gorkemcetin 7y ago
This has been something both requested and discussed online for a long time. Kids can't really decide what information to share and what not, and they are often bombarded by retargeting ads supported by analytics services. It still remains unclear how those apps will make money using 3rd party ads, but it is clear that kids apps won't be able to use 3rd party SaaS services (Mixpanel, Amplitude, Firebase, etc) and have to rely on same-domain-on-premises and/or open source product analytics services, eg Countly (shameless plug: I am co-founder of Countly, building an open source analytics platform particularly for privacy and security reasons). Let's see how it goes. Apple sometimes comes up with a "quick" decision and then stands down after a few months as criticisms occur. I expect that corresponding wording will change until the section goes into effect.
robbrown451 7y ago
Is this a new change? What is the backstory on this? And how is "third party" defined? Sounds easy to game by having it only directly communicate with the server of the app developer, and having it completely impossible for Apple to tell whether or not they are then communicating with a third party service.
- MBCook 7y ago
  It’s new, it was announced during the keynote on Monday. We’re getting some more details now though.
- anbop 7y ago
  An ad network is not going to trust your stream of requests, taking you on your word that your requests are coming from actual users and that the ads are getting shown back to actual users.
Someone1234 7y ago
How does this impact Google's "YouTube Kids" app. It is currently listed as the "Best video app for all kids" on iTunes. It contains more videos advertising stuff to kids than it does any other kind. With McDonalds non-affilitated but clearly still ads being the most prominent.
- lotu 7y ago
  Well given that Google own the AdSense/DoubleClick platform which is used for serving ads on YouTube as well as all of it's own custom analytic tools none of these would be third party. The part about not linking out of the app would still apply though.
  - tdaltonc 7y ago
    Wow, so that really reinforce the trend toward monopoly and conglomeration in tech. Make a kids entertainment platform and you must get acquired by google, facebook, Amazon or Apple before you can turn on ads.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Google should be shamed for marketing the ability to advertise to children. This is toxic antisocial behavior.
kerng 7y ago
I totally agree with this! I built a game and naively added ads to it as it seemed a good way to monetize. The game started to be really liked, and had 300k+ downloads overall. Many kids started playing it also. Luckily I realized quickly that kids play on the devices of parents and so the ads they might see are at times super inappropriate! Then I removed all ads, I'd rather make less money but have people play and have a good time. Its not always about money. At times I get contacted by players, how they love the game and how it has been part of their childhood etc. Some very moving messages, worth more then a few additional bucks from ads and I feel much better because players aren't exposed to random ads, pictures and messages. The learning for me was that I will never work on anything that uses ads as source of income, this includes turning down jobs at Google and Facebook.
- TheCapn 7y ago
  Do you morally disagree with advertising/tracking monetization as a whole or just those particularly geared towards vulnerable populations? (children in your instance) I have my professional job developing software solutions for clients on a contractual base, but for a period after I graduated university I dabbled in mobile development and made the decision during that time that I'd never bloat my crappy apps with ads or tracking. I can't particularly articulate why I'm against that business method as a whole, but something always felt wrong in subjecting people to tracking/advertisements for my own monetary gain... if I'm not producing something worth paying outright for then I'm not going to skim pennies off the privacy of my users.
  - penagwin 7y ago
    I think he was worried about ads that were targeted at adults, but their game was targeted at kids. Similar to how Spotify with ads includes Trojan condom commercials, which makes Spotify-with-ads unusable in many situations
    - hoseja 7y ago
      Which is a moral panic can of worms all on it's own.
sidlls 7y ago
This is interesting. What options does that leave for making money on these apps? Charging directly and first-party ads? Are parents willing to pay for these apps?
- iscrewyou 7y ago
  If parents are willing to spend money on consoles for their kids to play and for school supplies for their kids to learn, this isn’t any different, right? Parents will pay.
  - sidlls 7y ago
    Mobile is much more difficult to monetize than consoles. People have become accustomed to getting mobile apps for free.
- rodgerd 7y ago
  As a parent I've been cutting our family over to iPhones before this policy because the Android app world have become so fucking toxic. I'm delighted to be able to pay for things up-front as a business model.
akerro 7y ago
This is massive, Apple banned what Google does with Chromebooks for kids/schools.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Chromebooks for education don't use the information for advertising, right?
  - MBCook 7y ago
    That’s what Google says.
- hexane360 7y ago
  Wouldn't that be first-party analytics and advertising, and therefore allowed?
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  But they still take the data?
move-on-by 7y ago
So far the only kids apps I've used with my little one is 'Sesame Street' and 'PBS Kids Video'. He loves Elmo, and its very handy in the pediatrician's waiting room to have a distraction. I also run a PiHole, and to my displeasure, I've found both these apps use Google Analytics. PBS Kids Video goes a few steps further and uses Google AdWords as well as ScorecardResearch analytics. These publicly funded apps are siphoning data about me and my little one off to 3rd parties. The 3rd paries might not be able to use that data for targeted advertising within the app, but make no mistake that the data is still used to 'enrich' my shadow profiles. I am very excited about these changes from Apple and I hope that they are able to enforce them. I've written both of the apps support emails in the past about the analytics and never received a response. I've also heard of a popular BBC kids app called CBeebies. Last time I ran it on my iPhone, it reached out to Facebook, Localytics, Branch.io, Google Analytics, app-measurement.com, and onesignal.com
- nicholashead 7y ago
  Also, PBS Kids Video straight up wouldn't play videos at all unless I whitelisted certain analytics domains.
  - flukus 7y ago
    ABC (the Australian equivalent of BBC) too. The web player sends data to gigya, newrelic and googlegadgetmanager. The news site adds (just the front page) adds jwpcdn, chartbeat and loggly. The live stream are from scribly or someone and often the content of them is embedded twitter, so our national government funded news service isn't even hosting much of their own content and it's unavailable to many that have sites like twitter blocked at world. The don't even have the profit motive excuse that commercial sites have.
- penagwin 7y ago
  I dislike tracking as much as anyone, but can you really fault them for using Google analytics? It's not like PBS choose to use them "to profit off the viewers".
  - 7y ago
duxup 7y ago
I like it, leave kids out of this stuff rather than dance around policies and enforcement about what ad networks are good or whatever.
brownbat 7y ago
If you charge for listing and take 30% for sales, people are going to try some aggressive revenue techniques. One of the biggest unsolved problems for users is how to get the security of a walled garden while still encouraging open development, the sort of little experiments that become free simple QoL apps or toy proof of concept programs that spawn a business. It's a problem only for users of course, less so for the gardeners.
- scarface74 7y ago
  You mean they are going to charge enough money to account for the cost of distribution? That could even be a new business model -- charging people money and giving them stuff. Like software makers have done since the first personal computer or game console came out? You realize that retail stores were routinely charging 60%?
  - brownbat 7y ago
    This has sat for a while. I don't really understand why the sudden dismissive sarcasm, but my best guess is I just didn't explain my point very well. You probably don't care at all, but for posterity maybe I ought to explain what I meant. I feel like it's easier to find reputable free software on PCs than on app stores. I'm not saying all software should be free, or that free software is better than paid or ad-supported software, or that it's crazy to charge for hard work. Nothing radical. It just seems like on other platforms there are a variety of models that all overlap. Less so on app stores. My best hunch is that the dev fees have something to do with that. I feel like you're saying this is purely a distribution cost, but all these platforms are using the same Internet. I also don't think Apple is setting these fees at pure cost. They have a captive set of users that developers can't get access to in other ways. Monopoly rents for access to that unique set of users wouldn't be that crazy. Maybe I'm wrong though. If there's some other theory that explains this, I'd love to hear it. "It's expensive to move electrons" doesn't seem to explain why the ecosystems on different platforms are so different though. EDIT: tone.
  - buckminster 7y ago
    And don't forget manufacturing costs! You'd be lucky to take 20% of the retail price.
SparksZilla 7y ago
This will include Facebook, right?
- MBCook 7y ago
  I’m guessing that doesn’t count as ‘targeted at kids’.
- pwinnski 7y ago
  In the sense that Facebook is not allowed in the 'Kids Category,' sure.
- ClassyJacket 7y ago
  Facebook doesn't allow you to sign up unless you're 13 years old, and isn't in the 'kids' category of the App Store, so this is not applicable.
throwayEngineer 7y ago
But all Apple apps will continue to do this? You really need to drink the Apple koolaid to think this changes anything.
- scarface74 7y ago
  The only Apple app that has advertising is the App store. They've already stated that the games that will be a part of Apple Arcade won't have ads.
  - throwayEngineer 7y ago
    But they will collect data for APPL
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Third party developers will send data to Apple? What’s Apple going to do with it?
      - throwayEngineer 7y ago
        Apple has their own apps. Do they collect data on children? Will they let some high profile devs slip by? Apple is known to be anti consumer.
        scarface74 7y ago
        What data is are you accusing Apple of collecting? Apple is known to be “anti consumer”?
        dang 7y ago
        Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've been doing it a lot, and it's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
arenaninja 7y ago
Good; I only wish this is where applications on phones had started to begin with. Try giving a toddler a phone and they'll figure out navigation controls on their own easily, but once ads start playing they'll smash it because they have no clue what to do. Ads have no place in apps for kids
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
Creationer 7y ago
Apple should just go all in: Disable free to play games targeted at children completely. Require every children's game to have an upfront price (I suppose the $0.99 minimum app charge at least). This would be great news for the market - game developers would focus on building more rewarding gaming experiences, instead of just endless skinner boxes. It would also help sell Apple devices, since developers would not need to target the lowest-common-denominator for mass advertising appeal.
- drivingmenuts 7y ago
  I think your optimism is misplaced. App developers would soon figure out how to charge 99 cents for a Skinner box.
  - cwkoss 7y ago
    I wonder if you could list multiple copies of an MMO game client on an app store, with each client having a different price and providing different in-game aesthetic effects like "FooGame: Sparkly Hat Edition". Could be an easy way to get around this limitation.
    - drivingmenuts 7y ago
      That already exists with the Basic, Advanced and Pro editions of some application software. Extending that paradigm to a game is just a matter of determining which expansion packs are preinstalled.
  - Creationer 7y ago
    The 70c that they would get out of that sale would still be much greater than the current ARPU from ad and microtransaction supported games, and would go some way to encouraging gameplay shifts. Apple could just increase the minimum charge to $4.99 (or its regional equivalents) if it really wanted to increase quality. A decrease in its exorbitant 30% commission would be suitable as well.
LukeBMM 7y ago
How about adding an additional, voluntary section with apps that are bound by the same standards and requirements, rather than segmented by audience or purpose?
- scarface74 7y ago
  I would hope that an adult would have the maturity to make the decision not to use ad supported apps if they didn't want to.
  - lawnchair_larry 7y ago
    Adults can't really make that decision for analytics though. Most iOS users that don't use facebook have no idea that facebook has all of their data including their location because third party apps are using facebook's analytics SDK, for example.
yawz 7y ago
This should be the standard across the board, but unfortunately we're too far from that. As a parent, it pisses me off to see not-age-appropriate advertisement shown to kids.
- xemdetia 7y ago
  Yeah, part of me wonders if this is just more a reaction to the apps market hitting the next plateau and one of the last impulse growth markets being kids apps. Once there is a special category it should create a new breed of app that would inherently get less complaints/refunds/etc.
lameiam 7y ago
Apps intended for ANYONE must not include third-party advertising or analytics.
the_unknown 7y ago
As a parent of 3 children and owner of multiple iPads and Android devices (including a kids edition Fire Tablet) this really strikes a chord with me. We buy the Toca Boca and Sago Mini games and the occasional game from other providers that strike the kids fancy. But this is a huge development. Big enough that I'll be dropping the Android devices and switching my kids over to Apple ones completely. As it is I have lots of conversations with them regarding why some games they see will never be bought by us (like those awful Thomas and Friends ones that you have to buy then still have ads and IAP to put up with). Thank you Apple. But also, shame on you industry for making this something that I need to specifically look out for.
- fhsm 7y ago
  What do those conversations sound like with Thomas age kids? If you’ve got tips, metaphors, known failure, anything at all on how to create a class level understanding that short circuits per instance debates I’m all ears.
  - tclancy 7y ago
    Because I am weird and because most of our video consumption on the TV does not involve old school ad blocks, I started my daughter pretty early (late 3/ early 4) on the idea that ads are “trying to sell us things we don’t need” when we saw them on TV. Then it was ... fairly easy to extrapolate that to the idea we don’t buy apps/ games that are covered in ads. It’s not perfect, but it works pretty well and she seems to understand there is a whole class of apps we will not buy even if she doesn’t have a deep appreciation of Why. We shall see how long that works.
  - the_unknown 7y ago
    LOL. I ended up going overboard on it and actually took them to a store for Teachers' materials and bought some exercise books on Media and Currency/Finances and we've ended up with a bunch of discussions about personal finances, the advertising world, and critical thinking. I'm trying to instil in them the ability to analyze what they see, understand what the motivations of others are and translate that to the messages they receive. If all goes well they'll understand what ads are and how they manipulate us from a young age and be better able to deal with this crazy world as they grow older. Of course this is a long game - I don't know if I'm being successful yet but I'm hopeful.
lameiam 7y ago
> Apps intended for ANYONE must not include third-party advertising or analytics. At the very least, the software should be required to clearly delcare that users will be subjected to include third-party advertising or analytics and given the choice to opt out.
ixtli 7y ago
This along with the "sign in with apple" feature really makes it a good time to be a bit of an apple fanboy.
CountHackulus 7y ago
Dropping adds seems good to me, but dropping analytics doesn't seem great from a game dev perspective. New features and game balance is often driven by analytics data. For example, if no one's using a certain feature in the game then maybe it needs more attention brought to it or maybe attention won't be focused on it for the next update. I understand that there's a fine line between game analytics and farming PII but I think it's an important line. I'm sad to see Apple forcing you to use a first-party analytics solution. Smaller indie devs often won't have the time to set up their own data pipeline and depend on things like Unity Analytics or Flurry to help them do data analysis.
- dsjoerg 7y ago
  I guess I should start a service that provides small indie devs with "first party" analytics. I provide the software, it runs on a server dedicated to you, your data is separate from anyone else's. That's first-party, right? But I suppose I would have to charge 3x more for that than Amplitude does.
  - itake 7y ago
    There are a few OSS projects that do this. I am not sure how well they integrate with mobile apps though. https://matomo.org/ https://matomo.org/
- yalok 7y ago
  I agree, the part about analytics sounds like a bad news, given that there's no fine line... Also, I'm very curious how would they impose it? Suppose I still want to use my analytics provider as a SaaS, but will just relay traffic to it via my servers, and would only use that analytics for game tuning - how would Apple know about it?.. Another problem is that nowadays each app usually uses quite a few 3rd party libs/services, and each one of them may have analytics of one sort or another, even when the app doesn't explicitly use them for that, f.e. Crashlytics, Firebase, Logentries... With a strict approach there, I'd be worried about stability of kids apps, if devs would be forced to disable those services...
- cbsmith 7y ago
bfrog 7y ago
Working on an ad platform, this definitely makes sense. As a company we moved away from user targeting to context targeting where app developers provide all the context. Our case is specific to transit but I think in general this invasive ad model needs to go away
djsumdog 7y ago
Can we get this rule for adults too?
tdaltonc 7y ago
This means that if you make an app for kids, and you were planing on using ad monetization, your only recourse is to get acquired by an Ad-Tech company (Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon included) so that you can run "first-party ads."
musicale 7y ago
This is good, but they should probably ban all ads in kids' apps, particularly ads that push microtransactions and in-app purchases.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  You're in luck. I strongly suspect microtransactions and in-app purchases are next on the child content chopping block. (Well, at least for Apple.) If you're making apps for kids today, you should definitely start looking at how you can stay in business without these kinds of facilities.
thefounder 7y ago
Next: apps/games for kids should not include micro-transactions/inapp payments
fidz 7y ago
In addition, you may want to see https://www.appstorereviewguidelineshistory.com/ https://www.appstorereviewguidelineshistory.com/ for detailed changelog / history.
jiveturkey 7y ago
Apple is so 'on it' right now.
yalok 7y ago
Can someone please clarify the “analytics” part? All kinds of analytics services, or services that use your app analytics for their own purposes, or use it for the sake of ads targeting/retargeting, or have PII risks? I’m not sure I see the harm to kids if an app uses some ads-free analytics provider like Amplitude just for its own 1st party needs... or am I missing something?
- scarface74 7y ago
  Do you have the source code to Amplitude? If not, you don’t know what the binary blob you’re including in your code does.
  - yalok 7y ago
    yes, on iOS (Unity App) all of Amplitude SDK is in source code.
    - buremba 7y ago
      Yes, maybe they can't place an ad on your app but they do track all your user event data which means that they can target them somewhere else. All the iOS unique identifier, location, and user attribution data are collected directly into their servers.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - yalok 7y ago
        yes, they collect and store that data, but what if they don't use it anywhere else other than for my app analytics? It's a very vaguely defined rule which may create tons of additional work for developers, yet may not improve the privacy in some cases.
        buremba 7y ago
        Well, you can always use open-source solutions in order to collect your customer event data into your data-warehouse and run your queries on your own data.
ricardobeat 7y ago
Yes! This is amazing. The thing I most loathe is the advertising that shows up when my kid is using one of the few apps we allow (and PAID for), in the limited allotted time with the iPad. Total feeling of powerlessness, especially when the content is not exactly child-friendly: last one she told me about was an ad for a game with somebody tied up, having his head cut-off, inside Cut The Rope.
madrox 7y ago
I worked for a very large company that's considered a leader in apps and games for kids. I don't think this is as good as it seems first glance. COPPA compliance isn't new. There are some third party analytics tools that are COPPA compliant, and any responsible company is already taking COPPA seriously. What's new here is saying you can't farm responsibility for your data collection to COPPA-compliant third party SDKs. My guess is because there have been too many watchdogs raising concerns, and it's much easier to review apps for compliance if you blanket ban third party SDKs with this purpose. That said, this isn't going to change the business need. You'll just seem more first party code hitting a first party wrapper to a third party service. It will also encourage more small companies to try rolling their own, which invites bad security practices and greater risk what the data that is collected. I'm not sure that really helps kids or parents overall.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Like I said above, what’s wrong with the simple idea of getting people to pay for apps and avoid any ads?
  - madrox 7y ago
    I don't think there is, and there's a lot of apps with that model. However, that's not the topic at hand.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Hopefully with Apple making it harder to monetize via ads, it will be the topic.
  - whywhywhywhy 7y ago
    (almost) no users want that in 2019, When the App Stores launched we raced to the bottom and the price point we came to was free. Just read the responses in this thread yourself, 5 years ago it would have been full of people demanding this now there are just a handful of you and the rest have switched to demanding their free app deal is sweeter with less downsides, not that they would rather pay.
jsnell 7y ago
Here's how I expect this to go: 1. Six months from now, Apple will announce a new ad network, which will be whitelisted for Kids apps. 2. Twelve months from now, they'll ban all non-Apple ad networks in kids apps. If they want to be subtle about it, I'm sure they'll find some inappropriate ad to use as a pretext. 3. 18 months from now, they'll open their ad network to all apps. 4. 24 months from now, they'll ban non-Apple ad networks in all apps, and swim in money as they've found another way to squeeze more money out of their captive userbase. And every step of the way, HN will cheer as Apple continues to brutally exploit their ownership of the platform.
- cyrksoft 7y ago
  What's the problem about Apple doing that? It's their platform. You can go use whatever else you like, nobody forces you to use their system.
  - CaptainMarvel 7y ago
    What’s the problem about jsnell posting that? It’s their post. You can go read whatever else you like, nobody forces you to read their comment. If you don’t think jsnell’s prediction/complaint/insight was worthy, your post seems hypocritical to me unless I’m missing something.
    - cyrksoft 7y ago
      There is no problem about jsnell posting that. I just want to know what all the complaints about Apple (Amazon, Google, etc) is about. Why would it be wrong for Apple to do everything jsnell predicts?
      - kakkksaknmdm 7y ago
        It's not okay for Apple. It's a bait and switch tactic which Google uses that Apple is doing now. They created their App ecosystem on the basis of Ad's. Now they're strong arming developers to doing things their way. It should not be okay, and must be protested. I hope that the government and Anti-trust lawsuits force apple to unbundle the Appstore. Apple has made enough money to recoup their investment starting from the first iPhone, and made incredible profit over that too. Now laws should be made to ban appstores bundled with an operating system, and hardware. Everyone should be allowed to install the app store they want with a flick of a button.
crazygringo 7y ago
> Apps in the Kids Category may not include third-party advertising or analytics. Totally agreed for advertising... but analytics are essential to improving the quality and usability of apps including for kids, and they're a real cost to roll your own. Using third-party analytics is like using a third-party JPEG or MP3 decoder: it almost never makes sense spending 100's or 1,000's of hours writing your own. So I don't get it. What's the harm for kids in third-party analytics? Third-party analytics are just a service, they're not necessarily ever correlated with anything else. But even if they are, the only argument I can imagine is not helping further build up advertising profiles... but if kids aren't seeing the ads anyways then again, what's the harm?
- dawnerd 7y ago
  Because it’s wrong?
  - crazygringo 7y ago
    What is wrong about it? "Because it's wrong" isn't really a response without something backing it up. That's what I'm asking -- what's the harm, where's the wrong? The harm in advertising is obvious. A harm from third-party analytics is not.
    - dawnerd 7y ago
      Analytics can be harmful too. Developers use it to make the app/game stickier, more attractive to children. Children also have no way of consenting or even knowing what analytics are. Not only that but there’s no knowing what happens to the analytics at third parties - regardless of their privacy policies. Basically all third party analytics are designed to build profiles and help marketing. Plenty of safe ways to track interactions that don’t rely on third party scripts which gobble up all kinds of data. Plus might even be illegal depending on jurisdiction.
      - notatoad 7y ago
        >Developers use it to make the app/game stickier, more attractive to children another way to phrase that is "developers use it to make the game more fun"
busymom0 7y ago
I develop for both iOS and Android and since last year, I have completely stopped using ads in all my newer apps. I have switched to a freemium model. On my recent HACK app for HN client for example, I let you use all features and unlock features on a session basis. So lets say you switch on dark mode, I let you use it for the session until the app is either killed by iOS or restarted from the app switcher. Once restarted, you need to re-set the dark theme and I just show you a popup asking you to support development with a one time only small IAP. This freemium model has been working good. On another of my apps, OLEDify I have used a tipping/donation model where I give all features for free complete and hope that you will tip me whatever money you like. This hasn't really gotten me much despite thousands of downloads and DAU but I just don't want to support the advertisement companies based on all the recent manipulative tactics they have been playing.
tlogan 7y ago
This will not change a thing. I still have to see a kid which plays games from "Kids category". So no Minecraft... no Terraria...
tyfon 7y ago
I would be much more impressed if it said “Apps intended for kids may not include advertising or analytics” As it stands now it seems rather empty and in relation to recent news something that could fuel the anti-trust talks. Edit: considering that the law of my country states specifically that you can not target kids with ads, I wonder how apple will handle it since they now obviously have a method of tagging apps targeted at kids.
sadness2 7y ago
Sounds like a missed opportunity for Apple to provide a curated, child-friendly advertising channel.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  > child-friendly advertising channel There is no such thing. Children do not make purchasing decisions. Advertising to children is adversarial manipulation of the development of their preferences.
whenchamenia 7y ago
Can i just get kid cersions for all my apps then? Why should adults not enjoy the same freedom?
joegahona 7y ago
I don't mean to be pedantic, but I'd argue that Apple copy writers should have used "shall not" rather than "may not" in this text. The latter is ambiguous and could mean "perhaps they won't..."
- captainredbeard 7y ago
  Apple's copy writers didn't write it, their lawyers did.
jm20 7y ago
We have a decently popular kids app, Kodable, that helps kids learn to code. While this is something we’re mostly already in compliance with and have never actually included ads, I worry about the analytics. We use anonymous analytics to track things like user completion through level funnels. Nothing nefarious about it, if one of our levels is too hard for kids and there’s a big drop off from one to the next, we want to know about it and tweak it. I worry how this will effect stuff like that, but I also wonder how you can even differentiate “proper” analytics usage.
brightball 7y ago
A great start!
S_A_P 7y ago
Here me out here- I equate apps with ads as predatory. The gut feeling from many apps/games is that the goal is to annoy you into paying. Many “free” games let you have one ‘turn’ and then force a 30-60 second ad on you that usually redirects you to the App Store to download some other affiliate app. Maybe I am the old man screaming get off my lawn, but when pc shareware was the rage you usually attempted to delight the user into parting with their money. Then I remember a shift in the late 90s where ad/malware started showing up in shareware. That effectively killed the shareware market for me. Rubberduck h30 was the app I remember as the culprit.
- cbsmith 7y ago
  But this won't prevent ads. It merely prohibits third party ads.
mikejones911 7y ago
This is the trend towards a more algoithmically just world. What does this mean? Algorithms need not prevent a child from learning his or her own flaws. If a child can not learn his or her own flaws, then he or she has no way of developing into a individualized member of society. If an algorithm is always one step ahead of the child, per se, can the child ever self actualize?
rejschaap 7y ago
I never thought I would say this, but I will get all of my apps from the kids section from now on.
beaker52 7y ago
I'm being drawn into Apple by their stances on things like this and privacy. As much as I am bought into the Google eco-system, I'm questioning how long that'll be for.
datavirtue 7y ago
Is read the full guidelines and it looks like the Facebook app is dangerously close to getting dropped by Apple.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

1179 points by donohoe 7y ago

Here is the whole section > 1.3 Kids Category > The Kids Category is a great way for people to easily find apps that are designed for children. If you want to participate in the Kids Category, you should focus on creating a great experience specifically for younger users. These apps must not include links out of the app, purchasing opportunities, or other distractions to kids unless reserved for a designated area behind a parental gate. Keep in mind that once customers expect your app to follow the Kids Category requirements, it will need to continue to meet these guidelines in subsequent updates, even if you decide to deselect the category. Learn more about parental gates. > Apps in the Kids Category may not include third-party advertising or analytics. You should also pay particular attention to privacy laws around the world relating to the collection of data from children online. Be sure to review the Privacy section of these guidelines for more information. It appears to only apply to apps in the "Kids Category" so Candy Crush and the like can just say they are "adult"/not-kid-games and continue to be used by kids (while showing them ads and tracking them).

criddell 7y ago
Why do they ban third-party advertising in particular? It seems like advertising should be allowed as long as it's display only with no outward information flow. Basically ads equivalent OTA television or magazine ads should be allowed.
- m-p-3 7y ago
  Most likely to limit and control the ability to track this category of users.
- RickS 7y ago
  Presumably because third party insertion doesn't give the app creators sufficient control over what's shown. This happens all the time. Forbes.com starts serving malware and then cry "we didn't know! the third party guys just put whatever in that box!" So it's not (just) the outward flow of information, but the additional policing burden of a separate inward flow of graphics.
  - criddell 7y ago
    That makes a lot of sense.
- lozenge 7y ago
  Because no ad network is trustworthy. It avoids stories like "developer's labour of love banned over ad network that resold space to ad network that resold space to ad network that put an inappropriate ad".
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Marco Arment created his own ad platform that he curates for the Overcast podcast player partially for that reason and he didn't want random binary blobs shipping with his code.
  - astrodust 7y ago
    "Developer's labor of love taken over by a publisher that got acquired by Evil Corp which allowed anyone to buy ads on their platform."
- mithr 7y ago
  In general, I believe it's based on the belief that children in partiular don't yet have the necessary mental tools to be able to properly analyze content -- basically, that they're influenced by media to a much higher degree than adults. > Basically ads equivalent OTA television or magazine ads should be allowed I would guess that proponents of this approach also feel that the contents of TV/magazine ads should be strictly controlled (and probably they are -- I'm not sure what the exact regulations around these are, but I am sure it's much harder to publish a blatantly misleading magazine or TV ad, without consequences to the advertiser or the network/magazine, than it is to publish one online).
  - snek 7y ago
    Not just a belief, it's been studied many times, and it is in fact illegal to have "native" advertising on children's TV shows, at least in the U.S.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      Almost all cartoons aimed at kids hope to make money on related merchandise. A lot of animated shows were cancelled because while the ratings were good, they skewed toward older teens and adults that didn't buy toys. Two that come to mind are "Young Justice" and the original "Teen Titans". Cartoon Network specifically made "Teen Titans Go!" to skew younger. This isn't a new thing, they killed off most of the Transformers in the 80s movie so they could introduce a new line of characters/toys.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - eli 7y ago
    Then why are first-party ads allowed?
    - pwinnski 7y ago
      I hope this is step one, and that first-party ads are step two or three.
- lotu 7y ago
  I'm interpreting this as third party targeting, not that you can't use a third party handle the process of targeting, serving, and billing ads. If they are saying that the game company has to have their own ad platform that basically means only Google and Facebook will be able to release ad supported child targeted games on iOS in the future, which doesn't really make any sense to me.
  - pwinnski 7y ago
    If they choose to interpret the rule as "no ad-supported child-targeted games on iOS, period," that sounds good to me. I hope they do.
- nkrisc 7y ago
  Honestly all advertising targeted to children should be banned. It's just not fair. Children don't stand a chance against marketing crafted by adults. You're pitting the mind of a child against that of a trained, professional, adult marketer. The kid is their clay to be molded.
  - gameswithgo 7y ago
    adults don't stand a chance either.
  - majewsky 7y ago
    > Children don't stand a chance against marketing crafted by adults. Nobody can stand a chance against someone well-versed in applied psychology (i.e. a marketer).
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Especially that it's really you vs. a whole industry of well-paid professionals weaponizing psychological research.
    - repolfx 7y ago
      The fact that so much advertising barely works is the basis of Google's entire business model. The idea that adverts are all made by masters of psychological manipulation is laughable - most of it is considered successful of it just manages to get the name noticed and remembered at all.
  - AJ007 7y ago
    This seems to be getting missed, but those kids apps are serving ads for adults. Google has gone way out of their way to make it confusing to block mobile ads (you used to have to add a blacklist domain.) Last year they removed support for that and required advertisers to check an option within the ad campaign. Earlier this year they removed that option. This is a win for advertisers, a loss for publishers and ad networks making money from mis-targeted ads.
  - kalleboo 7y ago
- cwkoss 7y ago
  Children are not mature enough to understand that advertisements are lies meant to sell products, and can believe the content of the advertisements are true. This is harmful to society, particularly as young children are not capable of making purchasing decisions anyways - this is adversarial brainwashing of the most vulnerable.
  - criddell 7y ago
    That's true of advertising in general and not third party advertising in particular. Somebody else posted what I think is the correct answer - it removes the possibility of a third party showing inappropriate content to kids.
- lathiat 7y ago
  It sounds simple but one of the biggest frustrations is that kids accidentally click the ads which take you out of the app into something else. And constantly get confused. Hence it also requires the apps not to have external links etc.
lotu 7y ago
Obviously, but where do you want to go with that? Are you suggesting that because kids can use any app on a phone that all tracking and ads should be banned?
- lukevdp 7y ago
  No, looks like it is just the apps targeted at kids.
- Kluny 7y ago
  iPhones have kids mode that prevents the kid from using any app on the phone. That will probably only deter toddlers, but it's something.
  - xoa 7y ago
    >That will probably only deter toddlers Is this actually true? Jailbreaks haven't been persistent in the face of updates in a long while, so for devices kept up to date it's possible to lock down an iPhone fairly hard. I haven't investigated how parent control compares to full MDM, but the supervision capabilities now in iOS [1] are pretty powerful. For better and for worse of course, that kind of control over user devices, particularly in the context of parents and children, is definitely a double edged sword. But compared to typical computers I don't think it should be lightly dismissed either as something kids can just get around. They aren't open systems. ---- 1: https://www.apple.com/business/resources/docs/Managing_Devices_and_Corporate_Data_on_iOS.pdf https://www.apple.com/business/resources/docs/Managing_Devic...
    - Kluny 7y ago
      I figure older kids can use tactics like social hacking -- ie, whine at mom until she unlocks it.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  I think where it is going is just fine. The reduction of tracking and ads is a good thing, but that there is going to be a FAANG that is explicitly encouraging this is great news. I would prefer if the market itself forced out tracking and ads. Provide a space for it and that space can compete with everything else and if we're lucky will wildly outcompete the competition. This is the kind of walled garden I want to see. One with high walls and a door.
lallysingh 7y ago
Yup, and parents can just install one of the Kids-Category clones of candy crush that will inevitably show up.
- pwinnski 7y ago
  Which will include no ads, so: yay! Mission accomplished.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    No third-party ads.
    - soulofmischief 7y ago
      So what services are exempt from this ban? Does Apple offer a first-party advertisement plugin?
      - Gaelan 7y ago
        Not anymore, IIRC. Presumably, app developers would be allowed to sell their own ads in some fashion.
        Intermernet 7y ago
        If the app developer has 3rd party advertising clients can they sell those ads? What about "affiliate" ads? Where is the line here?
move-on-by 7y ago
> Keep in mind that once customers expect your app to follow the Kids Category requirements, it will need to continue to meet these guidelines in subsequent updates, even if you decide to deselect the category. I love this. You can't just follow kids guidelines to build up your user-base and then drop it in favor of ads and analytics. Once you follow it, you have to continue to follow it.
- stcredzero 7y ago
  This is more proof that apps and games are just another form of media. There are the same issues and conundrums dealing with children's media, as there are for books and television. I wish there would appear a 2019 version of Children's Television Workshop which would produce wonderful media for the children of today. (Is it already happening in some form?)
  - dole 7y ago
    Pretty much PBS Kids, "wonderful" being subjective in both directions, like anything.
    - move-on-by 7y ago
      PBS Kids includes 3rd party analytics
      - stcredzero 7y ago
        Whether something is the cultural successor to CTW isn't so much about the brand name. It's about quality, artistic integrity, and mission.
  - draw_down 7y ago
    Ok sure, apps fit within the category of “media”. Was there contention on that point?
  - Angostura 7y ago
    BBC CBeebies and CBBC is pretty goodd for kids programmes.
mc32 7y ago
YouTube would be well advised to follow this model for videos intended for kids and anything on YouTube Kids outside of iOS.
- jeffwass 7y ago
  On YouTube it’s not just the presence of ads that’s the problem, it’s the type of ads. My kids were watching an obviously kids-themed kids-friendly YouTube video and were shown an ad for Walking Dead, with graphic scary zombies. My 4yo was covering her eyes in fear. Like WTF Google.
  - tcfunk 7y ago
    Yeah I actually stopped allowing YouTube and YouTube Kids. YouTube has inappropriate ads, and YouTube Kids content is basically half ads in disguise (just people advertising toys and how they work).
    - braythwayt 7y ago
      Why can't things be like the Good Old Days when Raganwald was young. We watched Saturday Morning Cartoons, not played with apps. Hmmm... Now that I think about it, Saturday Morning Cartoons were filled with advertising for sugar and violent toys, some of which was clearly labeled as advertising.
      - robryan 7y ago
        Guess the experience varies country to country but at least they generally reserved selling for the ad breaks. Unlike say a paid unboxing video.
        darkpuma 7y ago
        By the 80s to 90s, a lot of popular kids shows were glorified ads for toy lines. For instance, 'Transformers' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers.
jasonhong 7y ago
Here is some past work from our research group on a machine learning classifier to identify apps for kids. http://www.cmuchimps.org/publications/identifying_and_analyzing_the_privacy_of_apps_for_kids_2016 http://www.cmuchimps.org/publications/identifying_and_analyz... The title, app description, screenshots, and icon give a lot of signals as to whether an app is targeting kids or not. In particular, icons and screenshots that use a lot of primary colors was a pretty good signal, though app description was the best feature.
HyperTalk2 7y ago
These apps will be nearly impossible to monetize. No ads, but also basically no in-app purchases either. I doubt many children will see a parental gate and actually do what it asks. They'll just treat it like a dead-end and close the app to find something else to play with. This category will be entirely populated by totally free apps that are created solely for branding purposes or funded by NGOs to push an agenda, with a very small number of apps created by uncompromised people who sincerely want to make the world a better place for children.
- chii 7y ago
  > nearly impossible to monetize. No ads, but also basically no in-app purchases either. How about a paid app? Charge what it costs to create once. The old model worked fine before the advent of IAP and adware. If the app is good, people would pay for it. Esp. if now there's a specific category for discovery!
  - Mirioron 7y ago
    There's a disconnect between who plays/uses the app and who pays. How do you know that it's worth the money if you're not going to play it?
    - petre 7y ago
      Make the first level free, charge for subsequent levels.
      - repolfx 7y ago
        That would require in-app purchases, no?
        petre 7y ago
        Or a free/paid app pair. Think old shareware games from the '90s, for example Doom2 1.9 shareware.

chillydawg 7y ago

If I were apple I'd extend the definition of a kids app as any app thats userbase is kids by majority. Not sure how to enforce or detect that, though!

Spooks 7y ago
This seems more like an opt in choice for developers of the app as opposed to forcing apps to the kids section (which as you stated would be impossible to manage)
djanogo 7y ago
The screen time feature lets parents control kids iPhones/iPads through content ratings, I am sure it would be relatively easy to extend it to kids feature. Also kids Apple ID would have the age info.
MBCook 7y ago
> Keep in mind that once customers expect your app to follow the Kids Category requirements, it will need to continue to meet these guidelines in subsequent updates, even if you decide to deselect the category. Sounds like they’re ready.
mehh 7y ago
Simple, use analytics ;)

Rebelgecko 7y ago

Are first party ads better for kids?

eli 7y ago
Likewise are first-party analytics better than Google Analytics? Some people definitely think so
Townley 7y ago
I think so. Among other reasons, those ads were deliberately included in the app by the people who created it (and now have explicit responsibility over the content of those ads). Since parents trusted those creators enough to give the app to their children, that's something.
vilhelmen 7y ago
I'm curious what keeps "first party" analytics/ads just phoning home and doing the third-party transaction server-side.
- majewsky 7y ago
  Apple's banhammer, should the public ever catch you in the act. (I guess.)
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    And their ban hammer is not terribly sophisticated either. They find one ad that is the same, or similar to, an ad being served someplace else and WHAM! Unless you've got money to burn, don't try to be nickel slick with Apple. Learned that the hard way.
pier25 7y ago
What defines first or third party?
- pwinnski 7y ago

panpanna 7y ago

Google please steal this idea. Edit: current policy is "Ads in your app that are served to children need to be appropriate and served from an ads network that has certified compliance with our families policies." See https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/building-safer-google-play-for-kids.html https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2019/05/building-s...

duxup 7y ago
Considering the state of the play store and such ... probably nobody is paying attention.
- panpanna 7y ago
  A year ago I would have agreed but a lot has happened lately. Play store went from 3.2m to 2.6m apps last year. When it comes to rejecting apps that violate their tos they are pretty trigger happy.
  - duxup 7y ago
    I feel like they're trigger happy... but via automation and scripts that I'm not sure are getting that much. Like the volume is down, but for all I know it's just the same actors getting the same stuff out there. It's really hard to tell.
    - panpanna 7y ago
      I thick they are starting to do some good. For what it's worth, Apple QA is also mostly automated.
      - duxup 7y ago
        It would be interesting to know how Apple's automation works as the impression (may not be accurate) is their approval or denying is a bit more precise.
  - 7y ago

pnutjam 7y ago

That's great, except there is no way to create a "kids" account without another apple device. My kids school won't participate in the program to create kids accounts for schools, and I don't own other apple devices. So on my rented ipad, the only option is to create a 13+ year old account (for my kindergartner). So now that she's in 2nd grade, apple thinks she's 16. I've complained about this endlessly to the school, and talked to a couple lawyers. Apparently there is no legal issue because I have to create the accounts, so they are my accounts. I'm just letting my kid use them. So... apple sucks, give us a web-ui for creating child accounts. I don't mind having a parent account, but you cannot have family accounts without an Ipad or some other apple device, and a single ipad is a single user device.

simongr3dal 7y ago
I'm no expert on family accounts but can't you set all that stuff up via macOS on a virtual machine? Or does it actually require iOS?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- pnutjam 7y ago
  I've never tried to run MacOS on a virtual machine. I'm assuming you can't get a license for that, so it wouldn't be an "official" solution, but do you have a link?
  - simongr3dal 7y ago
    https://techsviewer.com/install-macos-10-14-mojave-virtualbox-windows/ https://techsviewer.com/install-macos-10-14-mojave-virtualbo... The link has a guide on how to configure virtualbox to run macOS. They also have some links to the macOS installer, but there are also plenty of torrents around with disk images of macOS.
gridlockd 7y ago
> I don't mind having a parent account, but you cannot have family accounts without an Ipad or some other apple device, and a single ipad is a single user device. You can't just log in to the ipad with a parent account, create a child account, log out, then log back in with the child account?

lallysingh 7y ago

This is the first thing I've seen Apple do that actually makes me happy about them. I haven't considered one of their products in years.

gorkemcetin 7y ago

This has been something both requested and discussed online for a long time. Kids can't really decide what information to share and what not, and they are often bombarded by retargeting ads supported by analytics services. It still remains unclear how those apps will make money using 3rd party ads, but it is clear that kids apps won't be able to use 3rd party SaaS services (Mixpanel, Amplitude, Firebase, etc) and have to rely on same-domain-on-premises and/or open source product analytics services, eg Countly (shameless plug: I am co-founder of Countly, building an open source analytics platform particularly for privacy and security reasons). Let's see how it goes. Apple sometimes comes up with a "quick" decision and then stands down after a few months as criticisms occur. I expect that corresponding wording will change until the section goes into effect.

robbrown451 7y ago

Is this a new change? What is the backstory on this? And how is "third party" defined? Sounds easy to game by having it only directly communicate with the server of the app developer, and having it completely impossible for Apple to tell whether or not they are then communicating with a third party service.

MBCook 7y ago
It’s new, it was announced during the keynote on Monday. We’re getting some more details now though.
anbop 7y ago
An ad network is not going to trust your stream of requests, taking you on your word that your requests are coming from actual users and that the ads are getting shown back to actual users.

Someone1234 7y ago

How does this impact Google's "YouTube Kids" app. It is currently listed as the "Best video app for all kids" on iTunes. It contains more videos advertising stuff to kids than it does any other kind. With McDonalds non-affilitated but clearly still ads being the most prominent.

lotu 7y ago
Well given that Google own the AdSense/DoubleClick platform which is used for serving ads on YouTube as well as all of it's own custom analytic tools none of these would be third party. The part about not linking out of the app would still apply though.
- tdaltonc 7y ago
  Wow, so that really reinforce the trend toward monopoly and conglomeration in tech. Make a kids entertainment platform and you must get acquired by google, facebook, Amazon or Apple before you can turn on ads.
cwkoss 7y ago
Google should be shamed for marketing the ability to advertise to children. This is toxic antisocial behavior.

kerng 7y ago

I totally agree with this! I built a game and naively added ads to it as it seemed a good way to monetize. The game started to be really liked, and had 300k+ downloads overall. Many kids started playing it also. Luckily I realized quickly that kids play on the devices of parents and so the ads they might see are at times super inappropriate! Then I removed all ads, I'd rather make less money but have people play and have a good time. Its not always about money. At times I get contacted by players, how they love the game and how it has been part of their childhood etc. Some very moving messages, worth more then a few additional bucks from ads and I feel much better because players aren't exposed to random ads, pictures and messages. The learning for me was that I will never work on anything that uses ads as source of income, this includes turning down jobs at Google and Facebook.

TheCapn 7y ago
Do you morally disagree with advertising/tracking monetization as a whole or just those particularly geared towards vulnerable populations? (children in your instance) I have my professional job developing software solutions for clients on a contractual base, but for a period after I graduated university I dabbled in mobile development and made the decision during that time that I'd never bloat my crappy apps with ads or tracking. I can't particularly articulate why I'm against that business method as a whole, but something always felt wrong in subjecting people to tracking/advertisements for my own monetary gain... if I'm not producing something worth paying outright for then I'm not going to skim pennies off the privacy of my users.
- penagwin 7y ago
  I think he was worried about ads that were targeted at adults, but their game was targeted at kids. Similar to how Spotify with ads includes Trojan condom commercials, which makes Spotify-with-ads unusable in many situations
  - hoseja 7y ago
    Which is a moral panic can of worms all on it's own.

sidlls 7y ago

This is interesting. What options does that leave for making money on these apps? Charging directly and first-party ads? Are parents willing to pay for these apps?

iscrewyou 7y ago
If parents are willing to spend money on consoles for their kids to play and for school supplies for their kids to learn, this isn’t any different, right? Parents will pay.
- sidlls 7y ago
  Mobile is much more difficult to monetize than consoles. People have become accustomed to getting mobile apps for free.
rodgerd 7y ago
As a parent I've been cutting our family over to iPhones before this policy because the Android app world have become so fucking toxic. I'm delighted to be able to pay for things up-front as a business model.

akerro 7y ago

This is massive, Apple banned what Google does with Chromebooks for kids/schools.

saagarjha 7y ago
Chromebooks for education don't use the information for advertising, right?
- MBCook 7y ago
  That’s what Google says.
hexane360 7y ago
Wouldn't that be first-party analytics and advertising, and therefore allowed?
raxxorrax 7y ago
But they still take the data?

move-on-by 7y ago

So far the only kids apps I've used with my little one is 'Sesame Street' and 'PBS Kids Video'. He loves Elmo, and its very handy in the pediatrician's waiting room to have a distraction. I also run a PiHole, and to my displeasure, I've found both these apps use Google Analytics. PBS Kids Video goes a few steps further and uses Google AdWords as well as ScorecardResearch analytics. These publicly funded apps are siphoning data about me and my little one off to 3rd parties. The 3rd paries might not be able to use that data for targeted advertising within the app, but make no mistake that the data is still used to 'enrich' my shadow profiles. I am very excited about these changes from Apple and I hope that they are able to enforce them. I've written both of the apps support emails in the past about the analytics and never received a response. I've also heard of a popular BBC kids app called CBeebies. Last time I ran it on my iPhone, it reached out to Facebook, Localytics, Branch.io, Google Analytics, app-measurement.com, and onesignal.com

nicholashead 7y ago
Also, PBS Kids Video straight up wouldn't play videos at all unless I whitelisted certain analytics domains.
- flukus 7y ago
  ABC (the Australian equivalent of BBC) too. The web player sends data to gigya, newrelic and googlegadgetmanager. The news site adds (just the front page) adds jwpcdn, chartbeat and loggly. The live stream are from scribly or someone and often the content of them is embedded twitter, so our national government funded news service isn't even hosting much of their own content and it's unavailable to many that have sites like twitter blocked at world. The don't even have the profit motive excuse that commercial sites have.
penagwin 7y ago
I dislike tracking as much as anyone, but can you really fault them for using Google analytics? It's not like PBS choose to use them "to profit off the viewers".
- 7y ago

duxup 7y ago

I like it, leave kids out of this stuff rather than dance around policies and enforcement about what ad networks are good or whatever.

brownbat 7y ago

If you charge for listing and take 30% for sales, people are going to try some aggressive revenue techniques. One of the biggest unsolved problems for users is how to get the security of a walled garden while still encouraging open development, the sort of little experiments that become free simple QoL apps or toy proof of concept programs that spawn a business. It's a problem only for users of course, less so for the gardeners.

scarface74 7y ago
You mean they are going to charge enough money to account for the cost of distribution? That could even be a new business model -- charging people money and giving them stuff. Like software makers have done since the first personal computer or game console came out? You realize that retail stores were routinely charging 60%?
- brownbat 7y ago
  This has sat for a while. I don't really understand why the sudden dismissive sarcasm, but my best guess is I just didn't explain my point very well. You probably don't care at all, but for posterity maybe I ought to explain what I meant. I feel like it's easier to find reputable free software on PCs than on app stores. I'm not saying all software should be free, or that free software is better than paid or ad-supported software, or that it's crazy to charge for hard work. Nothing radical. It just seems like on other platforms there are a variety of models that all overlap. Less so on app stores. My best hunch is that the dev fees have something to do with that. I feel like you're saying this is purely a distribution cost, but all these platforms are using the same Internet. I also don't think Apple is setting these fees at pure cost. They have a captive set of users that developers can't get access to in other ways. Monopoly rents for access to that unique set of users wouldn't be that crazy. Maybe I'm wrong though. If there's some other theory that explains this, I'd love to hear it. "It's expensive to move electrons" doesn't seem to explain why the ecosystems on different platforms are so different though. EDIT: tone.
- buckminster 7y ago
  And don't forget manufacturing costs! You'd be lucky to take 20% of the retail price.

SparksZilla 7y ago

This will include Facebook, right?

MBCook 7y ago
I’m guessing that doesn’t count as ‘targeted at kids’.
pwinnski 7y ago
In the sense that Facebook is not allowed in the 'Kids Category,' sure.
ClassyJacket 7y ago
Facebook doesn't allow you to sign up unless you're 13 years old, and isn't in the 'kids' category of the App Store, so this is not applicable.

throwayEngineer 7y ago

But all Apple apps will continue to do this? You really need to drink the Apple koolaid to think this changes anything.

scarface74 7y ago
The only Apple app that has advertising is the App store. They've already stated that the games that will be a part of Apple Arcade won't have ads.
- throwayEngineer 7y ago
  But they will collect data for APPL
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Third party developers will send data to Apple? What’s Apple going to do with it?
    - throwayEngineer 7y ago
      Apple has their own apps. Do they collect data on children? Will they let some high profile devs slip by? Apple is known to be anti consumer.
      - scarface74 7y ago
        What data is are you accusing Apple of collecting? Apple is known to be “anti consumer”?
      - dang 7y ago
        Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've been doing it a lot, and it's not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
deleted 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

arenaninja 7y ago

Good; I only wish this is where applications on phones had started to begin with. Try giving a toddler a phone and they'll figure out navigation controls on their own easily, but once ads start playing they'll smash it because they have no clue what to do. Ads have no place in apps for kids

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

Creationer 7y ago

Apple should just go all in: Disable free to play games targeted at children completely. Require every children's game to have an upfront price (I suppose the $0.99 minimum app charge at least). This would be great news for the market - game developers would focus on building more rewarding gaming experiences, instead of just endless skinner boxes. It would also help sell Apple devices, since developers would not need to target the lowest-common-denominator for mass advertising appeal.

drivingmenuts 7y ago
I think your optimism is misplaced. App developers would soon figure out how to charge 99 cents for a Skinner box.
- cwkoss 7y ago
  I wonder if you could list multiple copies of an MMO game client on an app store, with each client having a different price and providing different in-game aesthetic effects like "FooGame: Sparkly Hat Edition". Could be an easy way to get around this limitation.
  - drivingmenuts 7y ago
    That already exists with the Basic, Advanced and Pro editions of some application software. Extending that paradigm to a game is just a matter of determining which expansion packs are preinstalled.
- Creationer 7y ago
  The 70c that they would get out of that sale would still be much greater than the current ARPU from ad and microtransaction supported games, and would go some way to encouraging gameplay shifts. Apple could just increase the minimum charge to $4.99 (or its regional equivalents) if it really wanted to increase quality. A decrease in its exorbitant 30% commission would be suitable as well.

LukeBMM 7y ago

How about adding an additional, voluntary section with apps that are bound by the same standards and requirements, rather than segmented by audience or purpose?

scarface74 7y ago
I would hope that an adult would have the maturity to make the decision not to use ad supported apps if they didn't want to.
- lawnchair_larry 7y ago
  Adults can't really make that decision for analytics though. Most iOS users that don't use facebook have no idea that facebook has all of their data including their location because third party apps are using facebook's analytics SDK, for example.

yawz 7y ago

This should be the standard across the board, but unfortunately we're too far from that. As a parent, it pisses me off to see not-age-appropriate advertisement shown to kids.

xemdetia 7y ago
Yeah, part of me wonders if this is just more a reaction to the apps market hitting the next plateau and one of the last impulse growth markets being kids apps. Once there is a special category it should create a new breed of app that would inherently get less complaints/refunds/etc.

lameiam 7y ago

Apps intended for ANYONE must not include third-party advertising or analytics.

the_unknown 7y ago

As a parent of 3 children and owner of multiple iPads and Android devices (including a kids edition Fire Tablet) this really strikes a chord with me. We buy the Toca Boca and Sago Mini games and the occasional game from other providers that strike the kids fancy. But this is a huge development. Big enough that I'll be dropping the Android devices and switching my kids over to Apple ones completely. As it is I have lots of conversations with them regarding why some games they see will never be bought by us (like those awful Thomas and Friends ones that you have to buy then still have ads and IAP to put up with). Thank you Apple. But also, shame on you industry for making this something that I need to specifically look out for.

fhsm 7y ago
What do those conversations sound like with Thomas age kids? If you’ve got tips, metaphors, known failure, anything at all on how to create a class level understanding that short circuits per instance debates I’m all ears.
- tclancy 7y ago
  Because I am weird and because most of our video consumption on the TV does not involve old school ad blocks, I started my daughter pretty early (late 3/ early 4) on the idea that ads are “trying to sell us things we don’t need” when we saw them on TV. Then it was ... fairly easy to extrapolate that to the idea we don’t buy apps/ games that are covered in ads. It’s not perfect, but it works pretty well and she seems to understand there is a whole class of apps we will not buy even if she doesn’t have a deep appreciation of Why. We shall see how long that works.
- the_unknown 7y ago
  LOL. I ended up going overboard on it and actually took them to a store for Teachers' materials and bought some exercise books on Media and Currency/Finances and we've ended up with a bunch of discussions about personal finances, the advertising world, and critical thinking. I'm trying to instil in them the ability to analyze what they see, understand what the motivations of others are and translate that to the messages they receive. If all goes well they'll understand what ads are and how they manipulate us from a young age and be better able to deal with this crazy world as they grow older. Of course this is a long game - I don't know if I'm being successful yet but I'm hopeful.

lameiam 7y ago

> Apps intended for ANYONE must not include third-party advertising or analytics. At the very least, the software should be required to clearly delcare that users will be subjected to include third-party advertising or analytics and given the choice to opt out.

ixtli 7y ago

This along with the "sign in with apple" feature really makes it a good time to be a bit of an apple fanboy.

CountHackulus 7y ago

Dropping adds seems good to me, but dropping analytics doesn't seem great from a game dev perspective. New features and game balance is often driven by analytics data. For example, if no one's using a certain feature in the game then maybe it needs more attention brought to it or maybe attention won't be focused on it for the next update. I understand that there's a fine line between game analytics and farming PII but I think it's an important line. I'm sad to see Apple forcing you to use a first-party analytics solution. Smaller indie devs often won't have the time to set up their own data pipeline and depend on things like Unity Analytics or Flurry to help them do data analysis.

dsjoerg 7y ago
I guess I should start a service that provides small indie devs with "first party" analytics. I provide the software, it runs on a server dedicated to you, your data is separate from anyone else's. That's first-party, right? But I suppose I would have to charge 3x more for that than Amplitude does.
- itake 7y ago
  There are a few OSS projects that do this. I am not sure how well they integrate with mobile apps though. https://matomo.org/ https://matomo.org/
yalok 7y ago
I agree, the part about analytics sounds like a bad news, given that there's no fine line... Also, I'm very curious how would they impose it? Suppose I still want to use my analytics provider as a SaaS, but will just relay traffic to it via my servers, and would only use that analytics for game tuning - how would Apple know about it?.. Another problem is that nowadays each app usually uses quite a few 3rd party libs/services, and each one of them may have analytics of one sort or another, even when the app doesn't explicitly use them for that, f.e. Crashlytics, Firebase, Logentries... With a strict approach there, I'd be worried about stability of kids apps, if devs would be forced to disable those services...
cbsmith 7y ago

bfrog 7y ago

Working on an ad platform, this definitely makes sense. As a company we moved away from user targeting to context targeting where app developers provide all the context. Our case is specific to transit but I think in general this invasive ad model needs to go away

djsumdog 7y ago

Can we get this rule for adults too?

tdaltonc 7y ago

This means that if you make an app for kids, and you were planing on using ad monetization, your only recourse is to get acquired by an Ad-Tech company (Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon included) so that you can run "first-party ads."

musicale 7y ago

This is good, but they should probably ban all ads in kids' apps, particularly ads that push microtransactions and in-app purchases.

bilbo0s 7y ago
You're in luck. I strongly suspect microtransactions and in-app purchases are next on the child content chopping block. (Well, at least for Apple.) If you're making apps for kids today, you should definitely start looking at how you can stay in business without these kinds of facilities.

thefounder 7y ago

Next: apps/games for kids should not include micro-transactions/inapp payments

fidz 7y ago

In addition, you may want to see https://www.appstorereviewguidelineshistory.com/ https://www.appstorereviewguidelineshistory.com/ for detailed changelog / history.

jiveturkey 7y ago

Apple is so 'on it' right now.

yalok 7y ago

Can someone please clarify the “analytics” part? All kinds of analytics services, or services that use your app analytics for their own purposes, or use it for the sake of ads targeting/retargeting, or have PII risks? I’m not sure I see the harm to kids if an app uses some ads-free analytics provider like Amplitude just for its own 1st party needs... or am I missing something?

scarface74 7y ago
Do you have the source code to Amplitude? If not, you don’t know what the binary blob you’re including in your code does.
- yalok 7y ago
  yes, on iOS (Unity App) all of Amplitude SDK is in source code.
  - buremba 7y ago
    Yes, maybe they can't place an ad on your app but they do track all your user event data which means that they can target them somewhere else. All the iOS unique identifier, location, and user attribution data are collected directly into their servers.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - yalok 7y ago
      yes, they collect and store that data, but what if they don't use it anywhere else other than for my app analytics? It's a very vaguely defined rule which may create tons of additional work for developers, yet may not improve the privacy in some cases.
      - buremba 7y ago
        Well, you can always use open-source solutions in order to collect your customer event data into your data-warehouse and run your queries on your own data.

ricardobeat 7y ago

Yes! This is amazing. The thing I most loathe is the advertising that shows up when my kid is using one of the few apps we allow (and PAID for), in the limited allotted time with the iPad. Total feeling of powerlessness, especially when the content is not exactly child-friendly: last one she told me about was an ad for a game with somebody tied up, having his head cut-off, inside Cut The Rope.

madrox 7y ago

I worked for a very large company that's considered a leader in apps and games for kids. I don't think this is as good as it seems first glance. COPPA compliance isn't new. There are some third party analytics tools that are COPPA compliant, and any responsible company is already taking COPPA seriously. What's new here is saying you can't farm responsibility for your data collection to COPPA-compliant third party SDKs. My guess is because there have been too many watchdogs raising concerns, and it's much easier to review apps for compliance if you blanket ban third party SDKs with this purpose. That said, this isn't going to change the business need. You'll just seem more first party code hitting a first party wrapper to a third party service. It will also encourage more small companies to try rolling their own, which invites bad security practices and greater risk what the data that is collected. I'm not sure that really helps kids or parents overall.

scarface74 7y ago
Like I said above, what’s wrong with the simple idea of getting people to pay for apps and avoid any ads?
- madrox 7y ago
  I don't think there is, and there's a lot of apps with that model. However, that's not the topic at hand.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Hopefully with Apple making it harder to monetize via ads, it will be the topic.
- whywhywhywhy 7y ago
  (almost) no users want that in 2019, When the App Stores launched we raced to the bottom and the price point we came to was free. Just read the responses in this thread yourself, 5 years ago it would have been full of people demanding this now there are just a handful of you and the rest have switched to demanding their free app deal is sweeter with less downsides, not that they would rather pay.

jsnell 7y ago

Here's how I expect this to go: 1. Six months from now, Apple will announce a new ad network, which will be whitelisted for Kids apps. 2. Twelve months from now, they'll ban all non-Apple ad networks in kids apps. If they want to be subtle about it, I'm sure they'll find some inappropriate ad to use as a pretext. 3. 18 months from now, they'll open their ad network to all apps. 4. 24 months from now, they'll ban non-Apple ad networks in all apps, and swim in money as they've found another way to squeeze more money out of their captive userbase. And every step of the way, HN will cheer as Apple continues to brutally exploit their ownership of the platform.

cyrksoft 7y ago
What's the problem about Apple doing that? It's their platform. You can go use whatever else you like, nobody forces you to use their system.
- CaptainMarvel 7y ago
  What’s the problem about jsnell posting that? It’s their post. You can go read whatever else you like, nobody forces you to read their comment. If you don’t think jsnell’s prediction/complaint/insight was worthy, your post seems hypocritical to me unless I’m missing something.
  - cyrksoft 7y ago
    There is no problem about jsnell posting that. I just want to know what all the complaints about Apple (Amazon, Google, etc) is about. Why would it be wrong for Apple to do everything jsnell predicts?
    - kakkksaknmdm 7y ago
      It's not okay for Apple. It's a bait and switch tactic which Google uses that Apple is doing now. They created their App ecosystem on the basis of Ad's. Now they're strong arming developers to doing things their way. It should not be okay, and must be protested. I hope that the government and Anti-trust lawsuits force apple to unbundle the Appstore. Apple has made enough money to recoup their investment starting from the first iPhone, and made incredible profit over that too. Now laws should be made to ban appstores bundled with an operating system, and hardware. Everyone should be allowed to install the app store they want with a flick of a button.

crazygringo 7y ago

> Apps in the Kids Category may not include third-party advertising or analytics. Totally agreed for advertising... but analytics are essential to improving the quality and usability of apps including for kids, and they're a real cost to roll your own. Using third-party analytics is like using a third-party JPEG or MP3 decoder: it almost never makes sense spending 100's or 1,000's of hours writing your own. So I don't get it. What's the harm for kids in third-party analytics? Third-party analytics are just a service, they're not necessarily ever correlated with anything else. But even if they are, the only argument I can imagine is not helping further build up advertising profiles... but if kids aren't seeing the ads anyways then again, what's the harm?

dawnerd 7y ago
Because it’s wrong?
- crazygringo 7y ago
  What is wrong about it? "Because it's wrong" isn't really a response without something backing it up. That's what I'm asking -- what's the harm, where's the wrong? The harm in advertising is obvious. A harm from third-party analytics is not.
  - dawnerd 7y ago
    Analytics can be harmful too. Developers use it to make the app/game stickier, more attractive to children. Children also have no way of consenting or even knowing what analytics are. Not only that but there’s no knowing what happens to the analytics at third parties - regardless of their privacy policies. Basically all third party analytics are designed to build profiles and help marketing. Plenty of safe ways to track interactions that don’t rely on third party scripts which gobble up all kinds of data. Plus might even be illegal depending on jurisdiction.
    - notatoad 7y ago
      >Developers use it to make the app/game stickier, more attractive to children another way to phrase that is "developers use it to make the game more fun"

busymom0 7y ago

I develop for both iOS and Android and since last year, I have completely stopped using ads in all my newer apps. I have switched to a freemium model. On my recent HACK app for HN client for example, I let you use all features and unlock features on a session basis. So lets say you switch on dark mode, I let you use it for the session until the app is either killed by iOS or restarted from the app switcher. Once restarted, you need to re-set the dark theme and I just show you a popup asking you to support development with a one time only small IAP. This freemium model has been working good. On another of my apps, OLEDify I have used a tipping/donation model where I give all features for free complete and hope that you will tip me whatever money you like. This hasn't really gotten me much despite thousands of downloads and DAU but I just don't want to support the advertisement companies based on all the recent manipulative tactics they have been playing.

tlogan 7y ago

This will not change a thing. I still have to see a kid which plays games from "Kids category". So no Minecraft... no Terraria...

tyfon 7y ago

I would be much more impressed if it said “Apps intended for kids may not include advertising or analytics” As it stands now it seems rather empty and in relation to recent news something that could fuel the anti-trust talks. Edit: considering that the law of my country states specifically that you can not target kids with ads, I wonder how apple will handle it since they now obviously have a method of tagging apps targeted at kids.

sadness2 7y ago

Sounds like a missed opportunity for Apple to provide a curated, child-friendly advertising channel.

cwkoss 7y ago
> child-friendly advertising channel There is no such thing. Children do not make purchasing decisions. Advertising to children is adversarial manipulation of the development of their preferences.

whenchamenia 7y ago

Can i just get kid cersions for all my apps then? Why should adults not enjoy the same freedom?

joegahona 7y ago

I don't mean to be pedantic, but I'd argue that Apple copy writers should have used "shall not" rather than "may not" in this text. The latter is ambiguous and could mean "perhaps they won't..."

captainredbeard 7y ago
Apple's copy writers didn't write it, their lawyers did.

jm20 7y ago

We have a decently popular kids app, Kodable, that helps kids learn to code. While this is something we’re mostly already in compliance with and have never actually included ads, I worry about the analytics. We use anonymous analytics to track things like user completion through level funnels. Nothing nefarious about it, if one of our levels is too hard for kids and there’s a big drop off from one to the next, we want to know about it and tweak it. I worry how this will effect stuff like that, but I also wonder how you can even differentiate “proper” analytics usage.

brightball 7y ago

A great start!

S_A_P 7y ago

Here me out here- I equate apps with ads as predatory. The gut feeling from many apps/games is that the goal is to annoy you into paying. Many “free” games let you have one ‘turn’ and then force a 30-60 second ad on you that usually redirects you to the App Store to download some other affiliate app. Maybe I am the old man screaming get off my lawn, but when pc shareware was the rage you usually attempted to delight the user into parting with their money. Then I remember a shift in the late 90s where ad/malware started showing up in shareware. That effectively killed the shareware market for me. Rubberduck h30 was the app I remember as the culprit.

cbsmith 7y ago
But this won't prevent ads. It merely prohibits third party ads.

mikejones911 7y ago

This is the trend towards a more algoithmically just world. What does this mean? Algorithms need not prevent a child from learning his or her own flaws. If a child can not learn his or her own flaws, then he or she has no way of developing into a individualized member of society. If an algorithm is always one step ahead of the child, per se, can the child ever self actualize?

rejschaap 7y ago

I never thought I would say this, but I will get all of my apps from the kids section from now on.

beaker52 7y ago

I'm being drawn into Apple by their stances on things like this and privacy. As much as I am bought into the Google eco-system, I'm questioning how long that'll be for.

datavirtue 7y ago

Is read the full guidelines and it looks like the Facebook app is dangerously close to getting dropped by Apple.

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