7 ms·

EU's AltStore Gets First Native iOS Pornography App

57 points by ilamont 2y ago

dangrie158 2y ago
I love the name Altstore PAL for the app only usable in Europe.
vednig 2y ago
[flagged]
- t-writescode 2y ago
  Wasn't that request by the UK, not the EU?
  - gostsamo 2y ago
    Never let facts stand at the way of an already formed opinion.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- pretext-1 2y ago
  That request came from the United Kingdom, which is famously NOT in the EU.
- pjc50 2y ago
  .. what do these things have to do with each other?
  - vednig 2y ago
    The government regulations are coming in between the proper functioning and quality required for what's best for users.
- troupo 2y ago
  "They've utilized EU regulations to prevent Apple from abusing its power that's why I'm going to bring in a completely unrelated bit of news from a country famously not in the EU"
- kmeisthax 2y ago
  The EU regulation is to prevent Apple from having a monopoly over mobile software distribution. The UK (not the EU) wants to just force Apple to backdoor iCloud. Insamuch as this backdoor involves any on-device code, it's the standard iCloud daemon (ubiquityd, AFAIK) that runs so long as you have an Apple Account sign-in. (can you even use an Apple device without one?) There isn't going to be a mandatory "UK Surveillance" app that everyone has to install, it's all going to be done server-side without your knowledge. If your goal is to spy on people's phones, shipping an app is not a great way to do that. You have to trick the user into granting specific permissions, use fingerprinting to correlate different data streams, and hope Apple doesn't catch and ban you. Furthermore, third-party app distribution means you have to convince your user to install random shit from the web, which lots of people are afraid of. And finally, Apple still reviews third-party distributed apps and still has the right to reject malware. The only control they ceded is that now apps they don't want on the App Store for non-technical reasons (e.g. they're a brand risk or the developers refuse to pay their tithes[0]) can live on AltStore PAL. But there's no additional spying being enabled that wouldn't have been available had Apple not been forced to respect third-party app stores. [0] Note that if you do use third-party distribution you still have to pay a "core technology fee" per install, so you still have to pay a tithe, but it's a different and potentially smaller one.
- talldayo 2y ago
  Most globally informed Apple customer:
jillyboel 2y ago
> Alternative app marketplaces are required to pay a Core Technology Fee for each install > Apple charges apps a Core Technology Fee (CTF) for each install after their first one million installs, but the fees don't kick in right away for small developers. Still ridiculous apple got away with this one. The entire point is to free users and developers from Apple's tyranny.
- martijnarts 2y ago
  It's still being investigated by the EU.
- EA-3167 2y ago
  Calling that tyranny really devalues the word, especially when you had to buy an Apple device to be "subjected" to it, and there are alternatives.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - fsflover 2y ago
    Calling this "alternatives" misleads into thinking they are reasonable and there's no duopoly: https://mastodon.sdf.org/@jack/113952225452466068 https://mastodon.sdf.org/@jack/113952225452466068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 True alternatives, GNU/Linux phones, are not as polished as iPhones are.
    - EA-3167 2y ago
      Not having the alternatives you want isn't the same as not having alternatives, nor is it tyranny.
      - fsflover 2y ago
        Duopoly is not a free market. It doesn't offer true alternatives.
latentcall 2y ago
Sounds like EU is the land of the free.
- lawn 2y ago
  Meanwhile the republicans are doing their best to make porn illegal.
  - Syonyk 2y ago
    The experiment of "all the porn for all the people with no limits" has been tried, and the results have been absolutely abysmal for humans. Beyond the abuse and sex trafficking ties (or the right at the edge of the legal definition but certainly not entirely consensual), revenge porn, and such, the impacts of porn on humans have been exceedingly harmful. There's the whole "PIED" (porn induced erectile dysfunction) thing, where a boy or young man's brain has been so wired from porn that they can't function with an actual woman, you've got disturbing increases in physical damage to people (mostly young women) from boys trying what they've seen in porn, etc. It's not harmless, on either end of the process, and as far as age gating, I'm not aware of any of the porn sites even trying to do anything until legally required. A 10 year old with a smartphone has no trouble finding things way over their head. So, yeah. The experiment has been tried and found wanting. I'm perfectly fine with them trying to make it illegal, or at least "radically harder to access than it is currently," which is "zero roadblocks at all." Society, and humans, were rather better off when you had to walk through the curtain into the back corner of the video store, or get something from the papered off magazine rack at a seedy gas station, than having it available, in total privacy, 24/7.
    - fsflover 2y ago
      > The experiment of "all the porn for all the people with no limits" has been tried, and the results have been absolutely abysmal for humans. Any links? Alternative opinion: https://aeon.co/essays/when-it-comes-to-pornography-whats-the-harm-in-looking https://aeon.co/essays/when-it-comes-to-pornography-whats-th...
wruza 2y ago
Any screenshots?
- bouke 2y ago
  The app screenshots shown in AlStore are quite sfw: https://cdn.fastpixel.io/fp/ret_img+v_8beb+w_2000+h_1125+q_lossy+to_webp/www.maistecnologia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/hot-tub-app-eu-maistecnologia.com.jpg https://cdn.fastpixel.io/fp/ret_img+v_8beb+w_2000+h_1125+q_l...
NotPractical 2y ago
One important thing to note that isn't mentioned in the article: you have to manually add the porn app's source URL to the AltStore before it'll show up there. Because you have to browse to the (adult) porn app website in Safari beforehand to get the link, it isn't any easier to access porn this way than it is by typing "porn" into the search box. Set up parental controls on your children's devices! Apple cannot protect them from the preinstalled Safari app (one of the most popular porn apps in the world) unless you take initiative. You can also block the installation of all apps outside of the App Store using parental controls.
kemayo 2y ago
Apple's stance that this is a shocking development, and previously the iPhone was some sort of porn-free zone is... strange. Obviously, there's a web browser, but let's ignore that for now. More notably in this "we make you safe from porn inside apps" framing, there's incredibly prominent apps like Reddit or X, both of which are lousy with porn. If Apple thinks that porn is bad and worthy of being blocked from its store, they should take a look at that. This is just wildly hypocritical otherwise.
- Syonyk 2y ago
  Are they doing anything with the on-device "Hey, this image someone texted you may contain nudity, are you sure you want to see it?" sort of filters with what's displayed in apps, or is this a parental control option?
  - kemayo 2y ago
    I believe apps can choose to hook into "sensitive content warnings" (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sensitivecontentanalysis/detecting-nudity-in-media-and-providing-intervention-options https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sensitivecontentan...) but I don't know whether any of the major social-networks-with-a-lot-of-porn apps actually do so. Mostly, they're in the App Store with age ratings of 17+, so parental controls will block them out. No idea how that system interacts with third party app stores, either -- but if it doesn't work there, that was very much Apple's implementation-choice.
amelius 2y ago
Does it run on the Vision Pro?
- pandemic_region 2y ago
  Asking the important question here.
amelius 2y ago
Content-filter != App-store, they are orthogonal concepts. Get it, Apple?
- diggan 2y ago
  I mean, they obviously don't, otherwise they would have done something about people being able to view porn in Safari.
nottorp 2y ago
Interesting: "While Apple does waive the CTF for the first million installs of an app, this does not apply to app marketplaces themselves. This means every download of AltStore costs us €0.50, period. This is clearly unsustainable for a free app supported entirely by donations — especially considering we already have millions of users — and we’ve seen a lot of discussion hypothesizing how we could possibly afford this. To us though, the answer is obvious…we can’t! So instead, we’re going to charge €1.50/year for AltStore PAL and pass the CTF onto our users." So Apple's rules either require a deep pocketed free to play peddler like Epic, or push small independent stores into subscriptions. This is still malicious compliance. Not to mention that I never wanted "alternative stores" but sideloading... why would I have any store control what I install?
diggan 2y ago
Poor innovation-less EU resident here, with PAL AltStore installed. Is it actually available? I don't find it while searching, or scrolling through the list of all the apps available in AltStore (a whole 5 of them). If it's in a external source, could you even say it's "In AltStore"?

57 points by ilamont 2y ago

dangrie158 2y ago

I love the name Altstore PAL for the app only usable in Europe.

vednig 2y ago

[flagged]

t-writescode 2y ago
Wasn't that request by the UK, not the EU?
- gostsamo 2y ago
  Never let facts stand at the way of an already formed opinion.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
pretext-1 2y ago
That request came from the United Kingdom, which is famously NOT in the EU.
pjc50 2y ago
.. what do these things have to do with each other?
- vednig 2y ago
  The government regulations are coming in between the proper functioning and quality required for what's best for users.
troupo 2y ago
"They've utilized EU regulations to prevent Apple from abusing its power that's why I'm going to bring in a completely unrelated bit of news from a country famously not in the EU"
kmeisthax 2y ago
The EU regulation is to prevent Apple from having a monopoly over mobile software distribution. The UK (not the EU) wants to just force Apple to backdoor iCloud. Insamuch as this backdoor involves any on-device code, it's the standard iCloud daemon (ubiquityd, AFAIK) that runs so long as you have an Apple Account sign-in. (can you even use an Apple device without one?) There isn't going to be a mandatory "UK Surveillance" app that everyone has to install, it's all going to be done server-side without your knowledge. If your goal is to spy on people's phones, shipping an app is not a great way to do that. You have to trick the user into granting specific permissions, use fingerprinting to correlate different data streams, and hope Apple doesn't catch and ban you. Furthermore, third-party app distribution means you have to convince your user to install random shit from the web, which lots of people are afraid of. And finally, Apple still reviews third-party distributed apps and still has the right to reject malware. The only control they ceded is that now apps they don't want on the App Store for non-technical reasons (e.g. they're a brand risk or the developers refuse to pay their tithes[0]) can live on AltStore PAL. But there's no additional spying being enabled that wouldn't have been available had Apple not been forced to respect third-party app stores. [0] Note that if you do use third-party distribution you still have to pay a "core technology fee" per install, so you still have to pay a tithe, but it's a different and potentially smaller one.
talldayo 2y ago
Most globally informed Apple customer:

jillyboel 2y ago

> Alternative app marketplaces are required to pay a Core Technology Fee for each install > Apple charges apps a Core Technology Fee (CTF) for each install after their first one million installs, but the fees don't kick in right away for small developers. Still ridiculous apple got away with this one. The entire point is to free users and developers from Apple's tyranny.

martijnarts 2y ago
It's still being investigated by the EU.
EA-3167 2y ago
Calling that tyranny really devalues the word, especially when you had to buy an Apple device to be "subjected" to it, and there are alternatives.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- fsflover 2y ago
  Calling this "alternatives" misleads into thinking they are reasonable and there's no duopoly: https://mastodon.sdf.org/@jack/113952225452466068 https://mastodon.sdf.org/@jack/113952225452466068 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261 True alternatives, GNU/Linux phones, are not as polished as iPhones are.
  - EA-3167 2y ago
    Not having the alternatives you want isn't the same as not having alternatives, nor is it tyranny.
    - fsflover 2y ago
      Duopoly is not a free market. It doesn't offer true alternatives.

latentcall 2y ago

Sounds like EU is the land of the free.

lawn 2y ago
Meanwhile the republicans are doing their best to make porn illegal.
- Syonyk 2y ago
  The experiment of "all the porn for all the people with no limits" has been tried, and the results have been absolutely abysmal for humans. Beyond the abuse and sex trafficking ties (or the right at the edge of the legal definition but certainly not entirely consensual), revenge porn, and such, the impacts of porn on humans have been exceedingly harmful. There's the whole "PIED" (porn induced erectile dysfunction) thing, where a boy or young man's brain has been so wired from porn that they can't function with an actual woman, you've got disturbing increases in physical damage to people (mostly young women) from boys trying what they've seen in porn, etc. It's not harmless, on either end of the process, and as far as age gating, I'm not aware of any of the porn sites even trying to do anything until legally required. A 10 year old with a smartphone has no trouble finding things way over their head. So, yeah. The experiment has been tried and found wanting. I'm perfectly fine with them trying to make it illegal, or at least "radically harder to access than it is currently," which is "zero roadblocks at all." Society, and humans, were rather better off when you had to walk through the curtain into the back corner of the video store, or get something from the papered off magazine rack at a seedy gas station, than having it available, in total privacy, 24/7.
  - fsflover 2y ago
    > The experiment of "all the porn for all the people with no limits" has been tried, and the results have been absolutely abysmal for humans. Any links? Alternative opinion: https://aeon.co/essays/when-it-comes-to-pornography-whats-the-harm-in-looking https://aeon.co/essays/when-it-comes-to-pornography-whats-th...

wruza 2y ago

Any screenshots?

bouke 2y ago
The app screenshots shown in AlStore are quite sfw: https://cdn.fastpixel.io/fp/ret_img+v_8beb+w_2000+h_1125+q_lossy+to_webp/www.maistecnologia.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/hot-tub-app-eu-maistecnologia.com.jpg https://cdn.fastpixel.io/fp/ret_img+v_8beb+w_2000+h_1125+q_l...

NotPractical 2y ago

One important thing to note that isn't mentioned in the article: you have to manually add the porn app's source URL to the AltStore before it'll show up there. Because you have to browse to the (adult) porn app website in Safari beforehand to get the link, it isn't any easier to access porn this way than it is by typing "porn" into the search box. Set up parental controls on your children's devices! Apple cannot protect them from the preinstalled Safari app (one of the most popular porn apps in the world) unless you take initiative. You can also block the installation of all apps outside of the App Store using parental controls.

kemayo 2y ago

Apple's stance that this is a shocking development, and previously the iPhone was some sort of porn-free zone is... strange. Obviously, there's a web browser, but let's ignore that for now. More notably in this "we make you safe from porn inside apps" framing, there's incredibly prominent apps like Reddit or X, both of which are lousy with porn. If Apple thinks that porn is bad and worthy of being blocked from its store, they should take a look at that. This is just wildly hypocritical otherwise.

Syonyk 2y ago
Are they doing anything with the on-device "Hey, this image someone texted you may contain nudity, are you sure you want to see it?" sort of filters with what's displayed in apps, or is this a parental control option?
- kemayo 2y ago
  I believe apps can choose to hook into "sensitive content warnings" (https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sensitivecontentanalysis/detecting-nudity-in-media-and-providing-intervention-options https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sensitivecontentan...) but I don't know whether any of the major social-networks-with-a-lot-of-porn apps actually do so. Mostly, they're in the App Store with age ratings of 17+, so parental controls will block them out. No idea how that system interacts with third party app stores, either -- but if it doesn't work there, that was very much Apple's implementation-choice.

amelius 2y ago

Does it run on the Vision Pro?

pandemic_region 2y ago
Asking the important question here.

amelius 2y ago

Content-filter != App-store, they are orthogonal concepts. Get it, Apple?

diggan 2y ago
I mean, they obviously don't, otherwise they would have done something about people being able to view porn in Safari.

nottorp 2y ago

Interesting: "While Apple does waive the CTF for the first million installs of an app, this does not apply to app marketplaces themselves. This means every download of AltStore costs us €0.50, period. This is clearly unsustainable for a free app supported entirely by donations — especially considering we already have millions of users — and we’ve seen a lot of discussion hypothesizing how we could possibly afford this. To us though, the answer is obvious…we can’t! So instead, we’re going to charge €1.50/year for AltStore PAL and pass the CTF onto our users." So Apple's rules either require a deep pocketed free to play peddler like Epic, or push small independent stores into subscriptions. This is still malicious compliance. Not to mention that I never wanted "alternative stores" but sideloading... why would I have any store control what I install?

diggan 2y ago

Poor innovation-less EU resident here, with PAL AltStore installed. Is it actually available? I don't find it while searching, or scrolling through the list of all the apps available in AltStore (a whole 5 of them). If it's in a external source, could you even say it's "In AltStore"?