Last week, reddit made its user base incredibly happy with the launch of an official iOS app for the news networking service. Less than a week later, Apple has removed several third-party reddit clients from the App store citing a violation of Apple’s clause 18.2 in their App Review Guideline — the clause related to NSFW content.
Reddit users were first to point out, on a thread on the platform, that third-party clients were being removed for containing “user generated content that is frequently pornographic.” The third party apps include Narwhal, Eggplant, Baconreader, iAlien and Antenna.
Conspiracy theorists speculated that reddit may have had a hand in this, considering the timing of it all, in an attempt to make sure users use the official app. That said, reddit client Narwhal has gone on record to clarify that reddit is not behind this.
“I reached out to reddit because their app was not taken down,” said Rick Harrison, the developer of Narwhal, on reddit. “They informed me that they did not request Apple to take down third party apps, and that they had received similar notices from Apple about nsfw content.”
According to the developer behind the Eggplant reddit client, they were asked to remove a NSFW toggle from their app and all NSFW content. It’s not just third party apps, as 9to5Mac is reporting that reddit was asked to update two of its apps — Reddit Official and Alien Blue — by removing the “Safe for Work Browsing” toggle.
“We were asked to update our apps (AB and Reddit Official) to remove the “Safe for Work Browsing” toggle,” said reddit. “This is a feature we previously refined with Apple’s help. We were surprised by the notice. We just resubmitted our build. We were not informed that Apple would be removing other apps. We were very upset to see that they did. Honestly, if we were interested in getting rid of 3rd party apps (which we’re not!!!), this would be the stupidest possible way to accomplish it.”
