Heavens! Russian Porn Apps On The Apple Store

by Coleen Singer at Sssh.com

By now, you’ve probably noticed that due to the ever increasing corporate cowardice on the interwebs, that it’s just darned near impossible to find much adult content  on mainstream news and social media sites.  The list is looooong……  Facebook, Google+, Huffington Post and even Pinterest!  One go-to place for mobile apps that has never allowed adult content of any sort is the Apple iTunes store.  So, it came as a bit of a surprise when Talking New Media hit the wire yesterday with this headline news: ”

Read on…

Apple’s porn business grows with the help of Russian “publishers”

In his coverage of this story of how a group of Russian app publishers breached the Apple walled garden with smut, D. B. Hebbard informs us:

For months Apple has been approving magazine apps from Russian developers that clearly violate developer guidelines. These apps, which promote the name of one magazine, once installed, give the read access to magazines under other names. Apple knows about this because I have had numerous conversations with Apple employees about the issue – in the developer support department and with the press team. Each time I heard only that they would look into it. But the apps remain, and new ones are being approved.

Apple, according to writer Hebbard, is knowingly allowing the Russian app developers to engage in deceptive practices via the apps, by allowing them to “promote the name of one magazine [while giving the reader] access to magazines under other names” after the app has been installed.

Hebbard continues, “My assumption was always that the magazines in question must be what one would call softcore porn—like that seen in many motorcycle magazines: suggestive pictures rather than full nudity. I hesitated to download any of the magazines because I naively believed that it couldn’t possibly be true that these digital magazines deliver what they promise to.

“But they do,” he added.

What irks me about this situation is that I know how difficult it is to get even mild erotic commentary and news apps into the Apple store.  About a year ago, we had EroticScribes turned into an Apple app after carefully cleaning out any dirty pictures and such.  Yes, the articles remained about sexuality and the adult industry, but was devoid of anything one could ever consider even softcore images or links to porn sites.  But, after submitting our lovely new app to Apple, we got back the rejection notice informing us that they would not be able to publish our app as the content of EroticScribes was “objectionable and vulgar in nature”.

Objectionable and Vulgar?  Well. Back to the drawing board! [We eventually did manage to get a free app on the Apple Store that is a dating and relationship running blog.  The only snag on that was it had some book reviews with links to the Amazon store to go buy the eBooks.  Apple didn’t like that much, so out went the links!]

Tom Hymes at AVN adds his commentary, saying “Time will tell if Apple’s apparent sneakiness in trying to make a few bucks on adult fare Steve Jobs would surely have forbidden on his network will come back to bite it in the ass. But one group of people who will not look kindly upon Apple’s “sexual development” are adult producers who currently play a cat-and-mouse game that involves a far less direct method of laundering traffic through innocuous apps, hoping to ultimately drive the eyeballs to hardcore destinations. The revelation that Russians have been provided a deceptive fast-track to Apple-blessed income from adult content is bound to irritate them.”

Yeah, I guess I’m one of those irritated cat-and-mouse players and am annoyed at those darned Russians that found a way to game the system, and, even moreso, for Apple turning a blind eye as it’s making a tidy sum on selling these apps.

Longtime and respected adult industry insider, Stewart Tongue, piped in to me this morning with a very good summary of the situation, saying “Corporate internet content providers have a long history of cashing in quietly and then making kneejerk decision when they get caught” said @StewartTongue. “This will likely go the same way Amazon went when they got publicly flogged for selling erotic ebooks. A cash cow now that they can slaughter later and claim ignorance about after they have profited from so many of their own truly ignorant customers. Shop locally – even online – and let your purchasing decisions speak for you.”

In case you missed the Amazon eBook censorship debacle, here is what I wrote up late last year.

Mind you, I’m not wanting to totally bitch and moan about Apple.  I have enough apple computers and devices to sink a battleship here and love them.  They “just work” and I actually DO trust the Apple Store to make sure any apps that I get there are not riddled with viruses like “that other app store“.  If I do want to watch some porn on my iPad, there is this little app called “Safari” that does the job nicely, thank you!  So, I’m not suggesting that Apple open the pearly gates to porn apps.  That’s just asking for trouble from developers like the above mentioned Russians that can and will find a way to game the system and suck more money out of consumers with murky billing practices than even Zynga could dream up with its new version of Farmville.
More Sex commentary by Coleen Singer at Sssh.com – Porn For Women, By Women since 1999