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This post should be evangelized like gospel! We MUST make App Store rules _even_ stricter. I hadn't thought about the nefarious patterns particularly targeted t

This post should be evangelized like gospel! We MUST make App Store rules _even_ stricter. I hadn't thought about the nefarious patterns particularly targeted towards kids apps until I read this. Heck, after hearing about Zoom's debacle with the Facebook SDK, I feel like Apple should make it impossible for 3rd party devs to use non-Apple approved SDKs. but sigh, I know I'm afraid this viewpoint is not shared by many in the developer world.

izacus 6y ago
Why won't anyone think of the children and just ban every single thing that might make their parents work!
- 2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
  That’s not really a fair argument. Parents have been over worked for decades. But 30, 20, even 10 years ago (first iPad was released 10 years ago!) you couldn’t accidentally buy digital rubbish. The kids sat in front of a TV and you had to beg your parents for toys. Now toddlers can discover things for themselves and frankly a lot of content for kids is trash. We haven’t caught up with how to deal with this.
  - Tainnor 6y ago
    You deal with this by not giving your one-year old an iPad.
    - Spivak 6y ago
      Yeah! Sit them down in front of a TV to watch reruns of cartoons or give them a magazine to read both full of ads for toys like the good ole days!
      - r00fus 6y ago
        They could gasp play with other things like legos or drawing/construction. My twin girls in gradeschool love building stuff, roleplay and make believe. Honestly that’s what I used to do as a kid when stuck indoors (which is more prevalent these days)
  - reader_mode 6y ago
    >But 30, 20, even 10 years ago (first iPad was released 10 years ago!) you couldn’t accidentally buy digital rubbish. That's not true - I clearly remember those TV telenovelas arround here having a paid line where you could get a summary of next episode and the number advertised during the show. The only people I ever heard about calling the service was kids racking up parents phone bills.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
      I’ve seen those dodgy subscription services, but never in relation to anything I was actually interested in as a kid. Maybe they were not as prevalent where I grew up. But now, everyone with an iPad or smartphone is a target. That’s new.
    - Tainnor 6y ago
      When I was a kid I found a very sketchy game on the teletext where you had to repeatedly call some phone line. My parents ended up with a 600 bucks phone bill. I also repeatedly fell for weird "order this set of dinosaur cards for free (but then it's an ongoing subscription)" kinds of scams. All of that stuff was annoying. And my parents ended up taking appropriate measures (blocking paid phone numbers, or just talking to me, for example). Nobody died because of it. Kids have always been good targets for scams. Nothing new under the sun.
      - user5994461 6y ago
        You were lucky that you parents were well off. There are many families what live paycheck to paycheck and wouldn't be able to feed the children after they lost 600 bucks in a phone scam.
        Tainnor 6y ago
        sure, that's a valid point (although, in the worst case, we do have social security nets over here). the point is more that kids falling for scams is nothing new.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - izacus 6y ago
    The author still wants Apple to ban software for everyone on the whole world - Americans, Indians, young people, old people just to conform to their ideas of what their children are supposed to consume. Whole world and everyone. They're not calling for a separate play store, restricted subsection - but they want every single person to be limited so they don't have to be careful about what exactly their child might accidentally download. This is the epitome of the worst "think of the children" argument.
    - user5994461 6y ago
      FYI: This is how TV works in Europe. Ads are banned during children programs, early morning before school and evening after school. Sometimes a blanket ban is a good thing.
nrmitchi 6y ago
I don't think many people are against prohibiting and/or restricting the use of dark patterns, and trying to push back on absolutely horrific user experiences. I don't think anyone is arguing that apps should be able to target and trick children into spending money, especially with the current "The walled-garden is to ensure everything is safe" argument. There is a difference between "Your app doesn't exactly follow our branding rules and you have a link that goes to a non-app web page", and "Your app is specifically designed to trick people into spending money and to spy on children".
ksk 6y ago
Or, you can have multiple app stores and kid-friendly app stores will specially curate apps to make sure there is no adult content, or other unwanted features. We already do this with a wide variety of physical goods. Apple doesn't get the source code for the App anyway, so a third party can perform the same type of automated + manual review that Apple does. Its time to open up the app store to competition. As a consumer, if you don't trust a particular app store, great, don't use it.
- threeseed 6y ago
  Epic for example is only going to allow Fortnite to be on their store. So how you are going to convince kids to use only specific app stores? And then if Apple is forced to regulate what is and isn't "kid-friendly" then isn't that just opening them up to the same criticism they have right now.
  - ksk 6y ago
    There are several ways to approach the curation/kid-friendly problem. You can have simple curation apps (which are banned in the current appstore AFAIK) that are not full stores but simply point to an app store (apple or non-apple). You can have websites that link to apps that have been vetted. On the iOS side, there could be a specific kid-mode that prevents certain APIs to be used. I'm thinking no video, audio, location/tracking services, no ads (unless the ad-network takes responsibility), etc. Apple won't brand any particular app-store as kid-friendly, or otherwise endorse them.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      Another solution is for kids to have an account which is restricted in which app stores it can install from, or simply can't install any new apps. Then the kid can't install Fortnite. But the kid can go to the parent and have the parent install Fortnite, if that's what the parent wants.
hinkley 6y ago
You have me wondering how many false flag conversations I've read where an Android developer argues that the Apple App store's rules should be more byzantine in order to confound 'the enemy'.
- yodon 6y ago
  > You have me wondering how many false flag conversations I've read where an Android developer argues that the Apple App store's rules should be more byzantine in order to confound 'the enemy'. None. Most app developers target both stores and those that target one or the other do so for financial reasons not fanboy reasons. No app developer is going to waste time trying to make an App Store worse. They are too likely to need that other store to be functioning properly on their next project.

izacus 6y ago

Why won't anyone think of the children and just ban every single thing that might make their parents work!

2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
That’s not really a fair argument. Parents have been over worked for decades. But 30, 20, even 10 years ago (first iPad was released 10 years ago!) you couldn’t accidentally buy digital rubbish. The kids sat in front of a TV and you had to beg your parents for toys. Now toddlers can discover things for themselves and frankly a lot of content for kids is trash. We haven’t caught up with how to deal with this.
- Tainnor 6y ago
  You deal with this by not giving your one-year old an iPad.
  - Spivak 6y ago
    Yeah! Sit them down in front of a TV to watch reruns of cartoons or give them a magazine to read both full of ads for toys like the good ole days!
    - r00fus 6y ago
      They could gasp play with other things like legos or drawing/construction. My twin girls in gradeschool love building stuff, roleplay and make believe. Honestly that’s what I used to do as a kid when stuck indoors (which is more prevalent these days)
- reader_mode 6y ago
  >But 30, 20, even 10 years ago (first iPad was released 10 years ago!) you couldn’t accidentally buy digital rubbish. That's not true - I clearly remember those TV telenovelas arround here having a paid line where you could get a summary of next episode and the number advertised during the show. The only people I ever heard about calling the service was kids racking up parents phone bills.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 6y ago
    I’ve seen those dodgy subscription services, but never in relation to anything I was actually interested in as a kid. Maybe they were not as prevalent where I grew up. But now, everyone with an iPad or smartphone is a target. That’s new.
  - Tainnor 6y ago
    When I was a kid I found a very sketchy game on the teletext where you had to repeatedly call some phone line. My parents ended up with a 600 bucks phone bill. I also repeatedly fell for weird "order this set of dinosaur cards for free (but then it's an ongoing subscription)" kinds of scams. All of that stuff was annoying. And my parents ended up taking appropriate measures (blocking paid phone numbers, or just talking to me, for example). Nobody died because of it. Kids have always been good targets for scams. Nothing new under the sun.
    - user5994461 6y ago
      You were lucky that you parents were well off. There are many families what live paycheck to paycheck and wouldn't be able to feed the children after they lost 600 bucks in a phone scam.
      - Tainnor 6y ago
        sure, that's a valid point (although, in the worst case, we do have social security nets over here). the point is more that kids falling for scams is nothing new.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- izacus 6y ago
  The author still wants Apple to ban software for everyone on the whole world - Americans, Indians, young people, old people just to conform to their ideas of what their children are supposed to consume. Whole world and everyone. They're not calling for a separate play store, restricted subsection - but they want every single person to be limited so they don't have to be careful about what exactly their child might accidentally download. This is the epitome of the worst "think of the children" argument.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    FYI: This is how TV works in Europe. Ads are banned during children programs, early morning before school and evening after school. Sometimes a blanket ban is a good thing.

nrmitchi 6y ago

I don't think many people are against prohibiting and/or restricting the use of dark patterns, and trying to push back on absolutely horrific user experiences. I don't think anyone is arguing that apps should be able to target and trick children into spending money, especially with the current "The walled-garden is to ensure everything is safe" argument. There is a difference between "Your app doesn't exactly follow our branding rules and you have a link that goes to a non-app web page", and "Your app is specifically designed to trick people into spending money and to spy on children".

ksk 6y ago

Or, you can have multiple app stores and kid-friendly app stores will specially curate apps to make sure there is no adult content, or other unwanted features. We already do this with a wide variety of physical goods. Apple doesn't get the source code for the App anyway, so a third party can perform the same type of automated + manual review that Apple does. Its time to open up the app store to competition. As a consumer, if you don't trust a particular app store, great, don't use it.

threeseed 6y ago
Epic for example is only going to allow Fortnite to be on their store. So how you are going to convince kids to use only specific app stores? And then if Apple is forced to regulate what is and isn't "kid-friendly" then isn't that just opening them up to the same criticism they have right now.
- ksk 6y ago
  There are several ways to approach the curation/kid-friendly problem. You can have simple curation apps (which are banned in the current appstore AFAIK) that are not full stores but simply point to an app store (apple or non-apple). You can have websites that link to apps that have been vetted. On the iOS side, there could be a specific kid-mode that prevents certain APIs to be used. I'm thinking no video, audio, location/tracking services, no ads (unless the ad-network takes responsibility), etc. Apple won't brand any particular app-store as kid-friendly, or otherwise endorse them.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Another solution is for kids to have an account which is restricted in which app stores it can install from, or simply can't install any new apps. Then the kid can't install Fortnite. But the kid can go to the parent and have the parent install Fortnite, if that's what the parent wants.

hinkley 6y ago

You have me wondering how many false flag conversations I've read where an Android developer argues that the Apple App store's rules should be more byzantine in order to confound 'the enemy'.

yodon 6y ago
> You have me wondering how many false flag conversations I've read where an Android developer argues that the Apple App store's rules should be more byzantine in order to confound 'the enemy'. None. Most app developers target both stores and those that target one or the other do so for financial reasons not fanboy reasons. No app developer is going to waste time trying to make an App Store worse. They are too likely to need that other store to be functioning properly on their next project.