Reddit News: News-Sharing Networking Site Denies Hands in Apple's Removal of Its Clients from Apple Store
Is Reddit itself behind the move of Apple to remove the former's third-party clients from the Apple Store? According to conspiracy theorists, the timing for Apple's move is dubious as Reddit also, allegedly, attempts to make sure that its users use the official app.
Just last week, many Reddit brought delight to its users after it launched an official iOS app for the news networking service. However, just less than a week, Apple took down some of Reddit clients from its Apple store, specifically Narwhal, Eggplant, Baconreader, iAlien and Antenna.
However, one of Reddit's clients, Narwhal, came to the defense of Reddit, claiming that it had nothing to do with the taking down of the apps.
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"I reached out to Reddit because their app was not taken down… they informed me that they did not request Apple to take down third party apps, and that they had received similar notices from Apple about NSFW content," said Rick Harrison, the developer of Narwhal.
According to Apple, the reason behind the removal of the said Reddit clients from its store is the violation they've made, specifically of its NSFW content as stipulated in its App Review Guideline's clause 18. 2. In fact, it was some Reddit users themselves who were quick to notice that the apps were being taken down from the Apple store for the reason of "user generated content that is frequently pornographic" and pointed out what they had seen in a Reddit thread.
Meanwhile, according to the developers of Eggplant, Apple asked them to remove not only a NSFW toggle from the app but also all of its NSFW content. Apparently, Apple did not only run after Reddit's clients but even Reddit itself. According to a report of 9to5mac, Apple asked Reddit itself to remove its "Safe for Work Browsing" toggle as an update to two of its own apps, Reddit Official and Alien Blue.
"… This is a feature we previously refined with Apple's help. We were surprised by the notice. We just resubmitted our build. We were not informed that Apple would be removing other apps. We were very upset to see that they did. Honestly, if we were interested in getting rid of 3rd party apps (which we're not!!!), this would be the stupidest possible way to accomplish it," Reddit said.
