This app may or may not be offensive. Personally (being straight) I find the idea of a "gay cure app" or "gay cure seminars" or "gay cure exorcism" despicable and repulsive.
That said, I don't believe an app shall be removed because it may be deemed offensive (by whatever standards).
Or as Voltaire put it:
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it."
The term is subjective, yes, but an app that promises a Gay Cure is by definition offensive, no matter what definition of "offensive" you choose -- it's also medically dangerous, since gayness is not really a disease.
So if Apple pretends that it's doing this approval for the betterment of the App Store, like a Shepard blocking out impure apps from its garden, then they'd better make sure Gay Cure apps are out, otherwise they are hypocrites.
> The term is subjective, yes, but an app that promises a Gay Cure is by definition offensive
By your definition - it had thousands of downloads and the organisation that produced it has thousands of members who clearly do not find it offensive and that likely extends to tens or hundreds of thousands of evangelicals (if not millions).
I'm pretty sure there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people in the world that still think Niggers are an inferior race or that Jews are the rats that will bring this world to annihilation or that believe Xenu, the dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy", really exists and he's going to be back one day.
Any treatment / cure that is advertised as such (without BIG BOLD letters of warning) should be approved or banned by relevant organizations -- there's precedent for it, like Scientology's E-meters being required to be marked as a "religious device".
By my definition "offensive" is a notion or device that's used to spread hate or shame versus other people's condition, people which are really harmless for society as a whole -- since gayness is not really a disease.
Don't be me wrong, I agree with your views - these are things I find offensive too, I'm just picking up the idea that something can be subjective and by definition offensive.
That's contradictory - if it's offensive by definition, there is no room for interpretation by the subject and therefore it can not be subjective.
Banning apps like iSmokeit would be like imposing your morality on the rest of the world, even if there are well-behaved smokers out there that only smoke in their own private space.
On the other hand apps that help you quit smoking are OK, since smoking IS bad for you in the long-run and dependency on smoking IS a treatable vice.
So, in other words, since everyone knows that smoking is bad for you, it's okay for pro-smoking apps to exist.
I understand why people were upset by the Gay-cure app, as people would be angry about an anti-vaccine app, or a pro-Nazi app.
I am not in favor of Apple's app store policy precisely because it encourages nanny-state morality on the flimsiest of moral grounds: profitability.
It reminds me of John Maynard Keynes' attributed quote: "Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."
It didn't deserve to be removed in my opinion. It wasn't hurting anyone by being there.
That being said, I can understand why Apple did remove it, because it doesn't make any business sense to enter a PR war over the relatively miniscule amount of profit they'd make from this app.
How is the app "not hurting anyone"? The implication of the app in question is that if you are gay you are some kind of diseased freak that can be "cured". Churches have been trying these kinds of "pray away the gay treatments" for homosexual members, sometimes with tragic results like self-loathing, suicide, etc. I am certainly for free speech, but things like this, hate speech, or the Westboro Baptist church protesting funerals of fallen US servicemen (see God Hates Fags[1]) are really pushing the limits of what is acceptable IMHO.
> The implication of the app in question is that if you are gay you are some kind of diseased freak that can be "cured".
Well, the organisation that created this app explicitly believes that. There's nothing implicit about it.
But it's not like they're forcing this app on people. I'm assuming it's being willingly used by people who believe homosexuality is wrong and think they can stop their own homosexual urges.
If that's what they believe, let them go for it, I reckon. I don't have a right to tell them that they should be having relations that they clearly believe are wrong or immoral.
We should remember, an attempt at a "cure for gayness" is what killed Alan Turing. If you don't know who this man is and worship him to at least some extent, you don't really belong here IMO.
I have to respectfully disagree. I'm glad they got rid of this stupid app. It's simply hate sugar-coated with psuedo-science. Apple made the right decision.
"app store removes questionable content" -- How is this news? It's not like the app store is known for being a "free" or "open" platform in the first place.
> I have to respectfully disagree. I'm glad they got rid of this stupid app. It's simply hate sugar-coated with psuedo-science.
If it was hateful, I agree. But I don't think the article even says what the app does, so how do we know that it was "hate sugar-coated with psuedo-science"?
I assumed this app was supposed to help "ex-gays" (or whatever they call themselves now) somehow. If that's the case, it's probably only being downloaded by people already involved in this stuff anyway.
So if they're downloading it out of their own free will, and it doesn't incite hate or violence, I don't see why it needs to be censored.
This is the limit of freedom of speech under the US Constitution. This is not the limit for morally acceptable behavior, and has nothing at all to do with a private company's control over their historically tightly and arbitrarily controlled ecosystem.
edit: not even this. Incitements of violence is the limit of constitutional free speech, not mere hatred. But to believe that propaganda claiming some people can and should be "cured" of their sexuality isn't hatred is idiotic at best.
"of course you can, otherwise Apple wouldn't have approved an app that does it"
'Apple' is a name that carries authority and that can be used to lend credence to misinformation. That definitely does hurt people. Read the above as the last thing a father said to his gay son. If banning this app prevents even one tragedy, then good riddance. There are no disadvantages to applauding Apple for removing this app.
I downvoted because the statement "It wasn't hurting anyone by being there" is wrong. Organizations and programs that advocate the ability to cure homosexuality are responsible for a lot of harm to individuals who are either forced into their programs or go to them willingly because they think something is wrong with them. These programs have caused or contributed to suicides among the LGBT community, so to say they aren't hurting anyone is just wrong.
I did not downvote it. However, I imagine that some people think that this app does hurt people, albeit indirectly, and that this is so obvious that someone overlooking it is either a troll or oblivious.
(I am not taking that position, or any other position about the app or photophotoplasm’s comment, in this comment. I’m staying strictly on the meta level here. Void where prohibited by law. Contents may settle during shipping.)
I really don't know how good the "offensive to large groups of people" standard is. If there were a Qur'an app, might not a large group of (racist, xenophobic) people find the idea of a book dictated by an angel to be offensive? Fortunately, Apple is a corporation and need not concern itself with being as exactingly fair as the federal government.
Apple doesn't actually have to be fair at all. They do, however, have to keep their shareholders happy, and that means they have to be careful not to do things that will significantly hurt sales.
However, the perception of being unfair can potentially hurt Apple.
I'm sure a number of religious conservatives are going to be unhappy with Apple's removal of the app.
People like me (who think the app is absurd and are not religious conservatives) may not like the removal of a religious perspective even though we disagree with it (as long as the app doesn't violate any laws, advocate violence etc.)
Create some litmus test apps, then. Put up a "Christian Cure" and "Muslim Cure" app and see if they get taken down or rejected. It would be interesting to see the results.
Not that interesting because they'd be obvious trolls. How about an app that purports to give support and counseling people who are questioning their sexuality, in two versions, with one for straight people who think they might be turning gay, and the other for gay people who think they might be turning straight? If one of them is denounced as homophobic and the other is approved, you could be on to something.
I'm only arguing in favor of applying this standard of curation to apps that provide medical advice, I wouldn't currently apply the same standard to other industries.
This is as much for social signaling reasons as anything else. For whatever reason, the medical industry is responsible for more spam and hucksterism than all other industries combined, so if you don't curate what people are providing then the entire app store loses it's value and credibility really fast.
This is a private business, not government. It isn't a lynch mob when someone decides not to do business with you. This isn't censorship.
When the government prohibits you from speaking, that's censorship.
When the New York Times decides to deliver some ideas over others, its not censorship. They own the printing press, they can use it for whatever they like.
The iOS platform has ads, crossword puzzles and a set of ideas. It has the same rights as anyone else to decide what its going to disseminate.
Freedom of the press rests on property rights, in this case the right to use your property to promote the values you choose.
Entities other than governments can censor. Government censorship is the worse type, but others are also bad.
It's completely the mentality of a lynch mob when you say "go get em boys, they did something we dislike" without stopping to say "Wait, should what they do be allowed? Could banning this have repercussions for other cases? Do I have the full story or just a filtered side of it".
The lynch mob is about the attempted boycott and press pressuring the press to pressure Apple to censor the app.
People have the right to object to things and people have the right to choose what they're going to promote. These are legitimate actions citizens can and should take when they encounter evil.
There's no lynch mob. A lynch mob decides to ignore due process of law and take the law into its own hands and carry out a sentence it thinks is justified.
In this case, the citizens are only doing what they are allowed to do.
why not get out of the judgment business, it's a loser.
just let (a significant number of) users report "potentially offensive apps" and make a category out of it. if the ratio is overwhelming then (users) ban the app.
A part of me does support totally free speech, but the other part of me is what made me one of the demonstrators against the Oxford Union when they had invited David Irving and Nick Griffin, and also that made me be one of the many people who emailed Apple (or, more specifically, Jobs) to complain about this app.
I've tried to have that debate between my two opinions so many times, but haven't managed to find a way to be OK with people who are racist or homophobic.
I'd still defend the right to call me stupid, to call all British people stupid (my country), and many other things. But some hatred goes too far over the line for me to not want to try and prevent.
I'm not particularly up on legal systems, but I believe that in both the US and the UK the law is with me, to an extent at least - while freedom of speech is promised, there are also laws against types of "hate speech"?
Plus, freedom of speech says that they should be able to have that opinion and to say that opinion, not that they have the right to have third parties promote that opinion. Extending that is why I had the right to complain to Apple, and, while their removing the app isn't exactly a case of "free speech", it is a case of them being able to chose what their company sells based on moral choices.
Classifying blatant racism under free speech can have actual consequences too. Consider the genocide in Rwanda in which racist radio programmes encouraged massive killings. You could say that everyone's responsible for their own actions, nobody forced anyone to grab machettes and kill their neighbours, but somehow that argument falls apart when you're dealing with mass hysteria.
AFAIK in both the US and UK you can still say whatever you want quite freely. Where the issue comes up is when people try to incite hatred, because all our laws fall under everyone else's rights being above our own.
There's a great aphorism that applies here: In theory, theory and practice are the same.
So it is with regard to free speech, and it's a thorny wicket. In a free marketplace of ideas, people are able to hear all viewpoints and select the most rational ones. Unfortunately, there are studies that seem to suggest that the repetition of a falsehood reinforces the ideas contained therein for at least some of the population. The best I can find quickly are "How Warnings About False Claims Become Recommendations: Paradoxical Effects of Warnings on Beliefs of Older Consumers"[1] and "Metacognitive Experiences and the Intricacies of Setting People Straight: Implications for Debiasing and Public Information Campaigns"[2]. (Look at the birther movement. There's an insane number of people in the U.S. who believe something to be true that is not only nonsensical but has been absolutely proven false. To many of these people, the means by which things were proven false has only reinforced their insane belief—and the more they repeat it, the more often they have a chance to convince others of their insanity being true, even though objectively it isn't.)
We know that words can wound deeply; look at the concerns over "cyber-bullying" and the reports of preteen suicides over some of those cases. As a parallel, it's illegal in every country with the concept of freedom of speech to incite a riot (even though the rioters are the ones causing the damage). As wlievens said, there's often direct consequences to hateful speech[3] that are deeply tragic.
Like corin_, I'm divided on this matter. I grew up American and emigrated to Canada as an adult. Canada has hate speech laws that can be fairly described as "prior restraint" and wouldn't pass muster in America. Those offend me as an American. But the level of discourse in Canada is, I think, better for such prior restraint. Obviously, one must be cautious in how one applies such things, but the improved discourse pleases me as a Canadian.
This is a long way to say: no, I don't think that free speech is more important than these other issues just because it's free speech. It's a complex problem without an easy hard-line solution that can be applied effectively. Because of the effects of repetition, sometimes the best way to stop hateful or stupid speech is to squelch it. And sometimes, it's the right thing to do.
Down Voting "Really?" I will try to be more elegant when mentioning Apple removed the Gay Cure app? Maybe throw something in there about lean methodology and MVP next time.
That said, I don't believe an app shall be removed because it may be deemed offensive (by whatever standards).
Or as Voltaire put it:
"I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend to the death your right to say it."