After a week in App Store limbo, photography app 500px has made its return.
As you may remember, Apple booted the app from its App Store for violation of Apple’s rules on pornography. Apple said that the app was removed after many user complaints regarding the porn.
But apparently, Apple has rethought their decision. It looks like 500px has done enough to assuage Cupertino’s concerns.
We’re happy to announce that our app is now back in the Apple App Store. You can get it here: https://t.co/6IBfZaVH
Upon yanking the app, Apple had this to say:
“The app was removed from the App Store for featuring pornographic images and material, a clear violation of our guidelines. We also received customer complaints about possible child pornography. We’ve asked the developer to put safeguards in place to prevent pornographic images and material in their app.”
It appears that 500px has inserted at least one new “safeguard” into the app – a new “report this photo” button.
They’ve also instituted a new age warning within iTunes. It now says that you must be 17 years or older to download to app due to “frequent/intent sexual content or nudity.”
But nudity is still accessible within the app. And Apple has approved it. Perhaps all of that media attention surrounding Vine and its porn problem (many pointed out that Apple was allowing it to stay in the App Store, alongside Twitter, which also contains frequent nudity) softened Apple up a bit. Or maybe it’s just another hard-to-explain move from a company whose nudity policies are notoriously hard-to-explain.
