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Apps containing nudity: rejected. Apps satirising public figures (including Hitler): rejected. Mein Kampf (including swastika): approved

Nipples are worse than swastikas, it seems

Apps containing nudity: rejected. Apps satirising public figures (including Hitler): rejected. Mein Kampf (including swastika): approved
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Apple’s prudish and apparently inconsistent policy concerning content on the App Store has frequently made headlines.

Prudish, because earlier this year it refused entry to a dictionary containing certain ‘urban slang’ words, and it has repeatedly refused to publish apps that contain bare breasts or political satire.

Inconsistent, because through iTunes it’s possible to obtain media containing nudity, profanity, obscenity, and many other great things besides, while on another of Apple’s sales channels it isn’t.

This inconsistency was perhaps best crystallised in Apple’s refusal to approve an official South Park app while continuing to sell South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut - which, in case we need to be reminded, contains the song, ‘Shut your Fucking Face Uncle Fucker,’ and features graphic lovemaking between Saddam Hussein and Satan - on iTunes.

Well here’s another one. Apple has approved Mein Kampf, the book Hitler wrote in prison before going on to drag the world into an unimaginably horrible war that killed more than 60 million people, on the App Store.

The graphic accompanying the book is a swastika. It's not available on the UK App Store and, as noted by The Next Web, the version approved is in Spanish.

No sensible, well-adjusted person is in favour of censorship, of course, and Mein Kampf has every right to a place on the App Store, but if Apple is prepared to give a platform to Hitler’s anti-Semitic manifesto - which of course played its part in the violent deaths of six million Jews - then surely boobs and satire ought to be fine, too.

Sadly not. In fact, Apple apparently deems ridicule of Hitler to be less suitable for sale than Hitler's bilious anti-Semitism. Last month, as reported by TechCrunch, Apple disqualified a Someecards application containing stills from the WWII movie Inglourious Basterds on the grounds that it, “contains … content that ridicules public figures.”

In other words, impugning an entire race in a raving work of insane political autobiography makes for acceptable content, but sending up the genocidal author does not.

Apple is innocent of malice, of course, but this sort of inconsistency is not just risible. It’s potentially very offensive.

Rob Hearn
Rob Hearn
Having obtained a distinguished education, Rob became Steel Media's managing editor, now he's no longer here though.