Jan 29, 2013 Last week, Apple pulled the 500px photo sharing app from the App Store over concerns about 'artistic' nude photographs on the service. Today, according to reports from both TechCrunch and 500px's. A Mac is using 500px, the world's most passionate photo sharing community. Many people like some of the images on 500px and just want to use it on their desktop background or so and can't simply right click on any of the images to download them.
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Apple on Tuesday pulled both 500px and ISO500 due to a claimed breach of App Store rules regarding pornographic material, effectively cutting off new user access to the popular photo sharing apps tailored to professional photographers and artists.
The apps' removal, as reported by TechCrunch, came early Tuesday morning following a late-night discussion between 500px and Apple over an app update that was flagged for violating App Store policy. The app has been in the App Store for over 16 months.
500px is a well-designed and long-standing app accompaniment to the online photography community of the same name. The company's Chief Operating Officer Evgeny Tchebotarev said the iOS versions have amassed over one million downloads, with 500px yielding almost one million, while the newly acquired ISO500 accounts for over 200,000.
When an update to the flagship 500px was submitted to Apple a few days ago, a reviewer flagged the app for objectionable content. Ultimately, the company found it was too easy to find nude photos through the built-in search function and consequently pulled the app this morning.
'The app was removed from the App Store for featuring pornographic images and material, a clear violation of our guidelines,' an Apple spokesman said in a statement to The Next Web. 'We also received customer complaints about possible child pornography. We’ve asked the developer to put safeguards in place to prevent pornographic images and material in their app.'
According to Tchebotarev, 500px already comes with a safeguard against the unwanted search of nude photos. When new users download the app, the default settings are set to 'safe search' mode that filters out nude images. In order to lift safe search, users must leave the app and make changes to their account settings on the company's desktop website.
“Some people are mature enough to see these photos,†Tchebotarev said, “but by default it’s safe.â€
Further, 500px does not allow photos deemed 'pornographic' in nature onto its service. Tchebotarev noted that all nude photos are artistic and can be defined as art, not pornography.
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The official 500px iOS app is back in the App Store.
Apple kicked the app out of the App Store last week, citing concerns that it was too easy for end-users to find nudity within the app. The removal highlighted some of the review inequalities that still plague the App Store nearly five years into its run.
SEE ALSO: 500px Removal Highlights App Store Inequalities
We spoke to Evgeny Tchebotarev, 500px co-founder and COO, about the removal process and the changes the 500px team needed to make to get the app back in Apple's good graces.
The Required Changes
Originally, the app was pulled from the App Store was because Apple said it was too easy for regular users to browse for nude images. Like many other apps with photo communities, including Tumblr and Flickr, some of the photographers who use 500px take photographs that contain nudity — not pornographic images, but nudity nonetheless.
Tchebotarev made some changes to the app to make it harder to find nude images.
The company also had to change the rating on its app. The old rating was 4+, which indicated it was fit for all users. While the company initially asked for a 12+ content rating — the same rating Flickr has — Apple asked the company to make the rating 17 and up.
Tchebotarev wasn't happy about having to make that change, telling Mashable 'it's not an accurate statement for our app and for new users, it could turn them off if they think the app has content it doesn't have,' but the team went along with the change because it wanted to get the app back in the store as soon as possible.
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On Friday, Apple reached out again, asking 500px to add a 'report' feature to the app for offensive or pornographic content. The 500px website already has this feature and according to Tchebotarev, most offensive material is flagged by its community soon after upload.
Nevertheless, the company made the change to the app. Every image on 500px's iOS apps now have a 'report' option. Tchebotarev said that adding the report feature to the app was already on the roadmap but was expedited to meet Apple's request.
Lessons Learned
Tchebotarev is relieved the app is back in the App Store. 'We're really glad we can continue a good working relationship with Apple,' he said. 'They are such a big company, not having them as a partner can really make or break a startup and we saw that firsthand.'
500 Px Mac App Installer
While Tchebotarev says that 500px itself didn't receive any sustained traffic or new user signups from the publicity related to this controversy, he did say that ISO500 — an app that was threatened with removal but was allowed to stay in the App Store — had 1000x install growth. 500px acquired ISO500 and its team at the end of 2012.
The situation faced by Tchebotarev and the 500px team is not wholly unique. In the age of user-generated content in apps, explicit material can and will get uploaded.
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Look at Vine — Twitter's new quick-video sharing service. It took only 48 hours for porn to invade the service, leaving the Vine team to scramble to block common hashtag searches and add in methods to report offensive content.
500 Px Mac App Keyboard
It doesn't help that the App Store's rating system is still seemingly arbitrarily applied (Vine has a 12+ rating). Perhaps Apple should consider adding a UGC rating type to the App Store. This way, users would be aware that because the app contains user-generated content, it might not always be suitable for all audiences. App developers would still need to take the effective precautions to delete illegal content and explicit pornography, but users would be aware of what they are getting.
500px Mac App Download
For Tchebotarev, he's just happy 500px for iOS [iTunes link] is back in the App Store.
Photo composite by Mashable, Christina Warren