I know “ if you wanted to you could moan and groan about this subject every day, all day “ and I don ‘t have any plans to go that route. Today is just one of those days where you see something in the App Store that just makes such a mockery of the whole ‘no objectionable content ‘ piece of the apps approvals process, that you have to do some major moaning about it.
I don ‘t think of myself as being easily offended, or quick to jump to label something ‘objectionable ‘ either. Last week I saw two apps “ one a charmer that helped you transform photos to apply various horrific diseases to people ‘s faces (like leprosy for instance) and one a very thinly-disguised shaking the iPhone to simulate a guy pleasing himself game “ that I thought were stupid and thoroughly unappealing, to me anyway. Neither one of them made me feel deeply offended though, and I was only mildly surprised to see them get into the App Store.
I can ‘t say the same for Baby Shaker though, which I heard about via a post on the KRAPPS site earlier today. This one, in my view, is objectionable and it is more than mildly surprising that it could ever have been approved for the App Store.
Baby Shaker “ per its own App Store description “ is basically saying crying babies are hugely irritating, so let ‘s have some fun pretending to shake one until it shuts up.
And in real life if you shake a baby here ‘s what can happen “ per Wikipedia via the same KRAPPS post
Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) is a form of child abuse that occurs when an abuser violently shakes an infant, creating a whiplash-type motion that causes acceleration-deceleration injuries. The injury is estimated to affect between 1,200 and 1,600 children every year in the USA. SBS is often fatal and can cause severe brain damage, resulting in lifelong disability. ‘ Besides death and brain damage, shaking a baby can cause blindness, leaning problems, seizure disorders, cerebral palsy and paralysis.
I realize that the whole idea of defining what is ‘objectionable ‘ is just an impossible, no-win situation for Apple from the start “ but even so, this one just strikes me as absurd. They can turn away a novel from a published author with respectable reviews on Amazon etc, for the use of ‘The f word ‘ in a thriller novel where an intimate scene does not seem out of place “ but this ridiculous app that I ‘d wager would be far more offensive to a far greater number of people got approved! Is that the next up and coming genre for the store now “ abuse apps. Will there be one to simulate abusing pets that are too noisy? Or abusing toddlers and older children if they act up?
Yuck. All of this stuff has a huge subjective element to it, but for my money this app is just about the poster child for ‘objectionable content ‘.
OK, end of rant “ and I hope I ‘ll not return to this sort of subject anytime soon either.
As I write this, I can no longer find Baby Shaker in the App Store “ don ‘t know whether that means my search just didn ‘t yield the right result, or whether it has been pulled by the publisher after lots of bad reactions on the web today, or even because Apple took a closer look at it. In any case, good riddance to it and hope it does not come back
UPDATE: Apple did end up pulling this app from the App Store by the end of the day “ following a huge amount of criticism and complaints all around the web, and apparently from individuals and groups affected by or involved with SBS issues as well.
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TAGS: approvals process, stupid decisions
