Apple’s $64 billion-a-year App Store isn’t catching the most egregious scams
theverge.comApple's response is pretty empty:
> “We designed and built the App Store to be a safe and trusted place for our users, and are constantly improving our processes to reduce fraud, malware and spam. To provide our users with the best experience, we regularly reject and remove apps, as well as fraudulent ratings and reviews, resulting in millions of removals every year. We intend to keep at this important work to ensure users can confidently download the apps they love and developers continue to make the App Store a great business opportunity.”
Sounds like they remove apps for lots of reasons (non-Apple payment methods, mentioning app store rules in release notes, etc.), but they don't have much incentive to remove apps that are top-grossing, since they get a cut of the scam as well.
This isn't quite it.
The amount of money made by these scam apps is relatively small in the grand scheme, but the negativity associated with them can cost quite a lot, it's completely toxic to the brand. Every single person scammed will be super angry and at least on an individual level, the Apple brand is scarred, moreover, the potential for a 'media meme' is strong. Enough of these articles floating around, someone at CNN may pick p on it and then it becomes a problem. That said, because Apple is a major advertiser, they may be less concerned. (Please let's not be naive and assume that journos don't come under pressure for financial reasons).
If Apple wanted to 'make more easy money' they'd just open p a Porn section in the AppStore and 2x their revenues.
Given that Apple is OCD-level brand conscious, this is a puzzle because the marginal return is just not worth it.
This may very well be an issue of operational misfire. Big companies are often much more poorly run than we think, and though obviously Apple is exceptional in some areas, they are abysmal in others. So it may just be operational incompetence, which is a root cause of most problems in the world.
Great work Kosta, I've met him, he's brilliant.
The fact that it's essentially trivial for a non-technical/non-expert to uncover obvious elements of fraud I think gives pause to the oft-repeated mantle "Our Control is Essential To Your Security". There are some voices here who oddly believe that their limited choice is a price worth paying for quality, but the reality is there's no legitimate reason for Apple to not allow 3rd party downloads if users so chose, and, no legitimate reason for them to not provide considerably more transparency in the approval process.
The paradox is, that unlike Amazon.com who may or may not actually benefit from a deluge of fake goods, Apple definitely doesn't need these scammy apps around for it's own benefit.
> Apple definitely doesn't need these scammy apps around for it's own benefit.
I guess you're saying Apple is very rich, so they don't need the cut of scam apps that are top-grossing? That makes sense, but it's the opposite of the framing I was thinking: if Apple is making money off of the scams along with the scammers, that doesn't set up a very strong incentive for Apple to remove these.
I completely agree with you about 3rd party downloads and review transparency.
And many of these issues are same for many bigger players, "thousands of fake 5-star reviews", "scams" and "recurring subscriptions".
Situation won't get better without legislative changes.
There are always tradeoffs. If the pendulum swings the other way how many innocent apps would be sacrificed at the altar of “good”. I rarely see any of the cost/benefit analysis here. The same problem occurs in many other realms of society.
I like the Android option of being able to download apps (at your own risk) from a url without the app store. It is optional and used by very few people of course. But freedom to choose at ones own risk is the guarantor of liberty from the App Store overlords and their dictates.