On Sunday Apple removed another app from its App Store, Metadata+. The app gave notifications on U.S. drone activity. It sent a message giving the reason for the removal that said, Apple has removed Metadata+ from the App Store due to “excessively crude or objectionable content. Thank you.”
The problem with the removal is that it was sudden and inexplicable as there was no graphic or violent evidence, only texts and a map.
Apple removes drone strike news app, deems it ‘not useful or entertaining enough’ http://t.co/pWGR7bKpmD | etribune
— Pakistan News (@Pak_reuters) September 29, 2015
Apple suddenly banned an app that maps U.S. drone strikes http://t.co/ehh62fRIPl pic.twitter.com/34Nchsd3Sp
— Mic (@mic) September 30, 2015
Recently, Apple removed apps that took you to the place of the Ferguson, Missouri shooting of Michael Brown, as well as an education app that gave historical context of the Confederate flag. In addition to removing the educational app, it also felt the need to remove any Civil War games.
It is worthy to note that it hasn’t removed games that many would consider violent, such as Hitman: Sniper, Empires and Allies as well as games where the user has to carry out drone strikes. Those games of course create revenue, so they won’t be considered for removal.
Apple rewrites history by removing all American Civil War games grom the App Store because of the confederate flag http://t.co/F4Vy7pAfmy
— REGENT Emilien (@onTheFlex) June 29, 2015
It seems Apple’s filtering process has some curious connections. A commonality with all the previously mentioned apps that have been removed is that they were related to the U.S. government. Hmmm.
Creator of the Metadata+ app, Josh Begley, will continue to send notifications through the twitter account Dronestream. And the app Ephemeral+ is still available, which gives the same type of information as Metadata+.