GreatFire is tracking Apple iOS applications for instances of censorship

Re:GreatFire is tracking Apple iOS applications for instance... by duskwuff on Sunday February 03, 2019 @09:22PM (#19073513)

I would hesitate to call that "censorship" at all. Some apps simply aren't relevant in a country because they're associated with a physical service which doesn't exist there. For example, a number of food delivery apps (like Uber Eats and Grubhub) don't operate in China, and as such have chosen to not make their app available there.

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Re:GreatFire is tracking Apple iOS applications for instance... by yoz-y on Monday February 04, 2019 @07:31AM (#19075748)

App Store search is at least partly to blame for this too. For example Uber is available in France but of course it does not work in all cities. The countries is just a larger version of the same thing.

Ideally apps that have regional restrictions should be able to declare that and then when you do a search it would not show results outside of the scope unless you searched for the exact name or enabled outside of region search.

Users are partly to blame too, selling an untranslated app in France will bring down tons of 1 star reviews specifically calling out lack of French version. I suppose some developers just decide to not deal with that and retire the app from the store.

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Re:GreatFire is tracking Apple iOS applications for instance... by lazyasciiart on Sunday February 03, 2019 @09:50PM (#19073614)

And nobody ever leaves the country. Or if they do, they're totally willing to go through the entire giant hassle of switching their account for a few days.

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Re:GreatFire is tracking Apple iOS applications for instance... by threeseed on Sunday February 03, 2019 @11:10PM (#19073932)

Then take that up with the individual app developer.

It has nothing to do with Apple or censorship.

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Re:GreatFire is tracking Apple iOS applications for instance... by lazyasciiart on Monday February 04, 2019 @12:51AM (#19074257)

I was objecting to the statement that some apps are not relevant in those countries.

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Re:GreatFire is tracking Apple iOS applications for instance... by Arnt on Monday February 04, 2019 @07:17AM (#19075664)

At a guess, restricting an area-specific app to its service area diminishes the number of unanswerable support questions and one-star reviews by people outside the service area.

Pity for expats (like me).

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Re:GreatFire is tracking Apple iOS applications for instance... by PhasmaFelis on Sunday February 03, 2019 @10:58PM (#19073889)

That's a pain in the ass, but it's not censorship.

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Re:GreatFire is tracking Apple iOS applications for instance... by amingilani on Sunday February 03, 2019 @09:52PM (#19073621)

Yeah, that's how I found out BotA didn't distribute their app in Pakistan

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Re:GreatFire is tracking Apple iOS applications for instance... by mikkelam on Monday February 04, 2019 @03:45AM (#19074839)

You have to specifically go into settings and change your app store country

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