Apple removes over 5000 apps from iPhone app store

Apple is causing a stir in the iPhone community by removing over 5000 apps from the app store due to what they deem as inappropriate content.  Apple has long been known for being protective over what gets onto the app store , but never before have they rejected or removed so many apps at once.  This recent course of action has caused Apple to receive a great deal of criticism from iPhone users, app developers, and the media.

The official reason of Apple banning the apps is due to what they deem “sexually inappropriate.”  While some of these apps are very mature in nature, some are just joke apps that wanted a cheap laugh.  In response to the removal of the apps, Apple has posted new guidelines to submitting apps.  Here they are as reported by MobileCrunch:

   1. No images of women in bikinis  ( I personally found this rule highly hypocritical as the SI swimsuit  app is a top app on iTunes.)
   2. No images of men in bikinis
   3. No skin
   4. No silhouettes
   5. No sexual connotations or innuendo.
   6. Nothing that can be sexually arousing
   7. No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content

I personally, am highly against this stance Apple has taken.  Censorship on any level is wrong for a person‘s development, and bad for a society.  I may not have agreed with what the banned apps had shown, but they shouldn’t have been banned.  We can not live in a society where an entity, whether it be governmental or a business conglomerate, can tell us what we can and can’t watch, listen to, or do, especially when no one is being hurt because of it.  Once that line is crossed, we can never go back, and our democratic society we live in will become nothing short of a socialist police state.