e dot dot dot
a mostly about the Internet blog by

April 2021
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
       
 


Content Moderation Case Study: Apple Blocks WordPress Updates In Dispute Over Non-Existent In-app Purchase (2020)

Furnished content.


Summary: Apple controls what apps get onto iPhone and iPads via its full control over the iOS App Store. Every app (and its updates) need to be reviewed by Apple staff before it's allowed in the store -- and Apple puts in place its own rules for what is and what is not allowed.One of those rules is that Apple takes a 30% cut of any sales. That fee has become somewhat controversial, especially among service providers who don't rely on the App Store for discovery, but whose customers likely come on their own -- including Spotify and Epic Games. Spotify, in particular, has urged users to subscribe directly, to avoid having to pay the additional amount per month to cover Apple's fees. In response, Apple forbade Spotify from even mentioning that it's cheaper to subscribe outside of the App Store, which is now a central piece of an antitrust fight that is ongoing in the EU.Perhaps because of all of this, Apple has had to make decisions about whether or not to allow apps in the App Store that seek to avoid paying Apple's cut of the fees. In August of 2020, Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Automattic, and the founder/lead developer of the WordPress content management system, announced that the iOS app for WordPress had been frozen by Apple. The given reason was that Apple believed that WordPress was trying to avoid the fees for in-app purchases.

This was the cause of much confusion, as many people noted that the app did not actually sell anything. While WordPress.com does offer paid hosting plans (and domain reselling), that was not a part of the WordPress app. However, as Mullenweg's tweet showed, Apple was noting that because somewhere else in WordPress.com's business, it sold things, that meant that WordPress had to pay it a 30% cut of those sales (even though they were outside of the app itself) in order to keep the app in the App Store.Decisions to be made by Apple:
  • How thoroughly should the company be reviewing the business models of apps in the App Store to determine whether they can be included?
  • What actually constitutes an attempt to get around the App Store fee?
  • Will app developers take advantage of exceptions to the rules if Apple does not follow them closely?
  • Should the company allow alternative ways of getting apps on the phone outside of the App Store?
Questions and policy implications to consider:
  • When a company builds an entire device ecosystem, should it be able to set its own rules for what apps are allowed on the device?
  • Can content moderation decisions raise antitrust concerns?
  • Are there policy implications of a single entity reviewing what apps are allowed on a device?
Resolution: As this story got more attention, Apple apologized and restored the WordPress developer account. However, its statement on the matter implied that WordPress had removed an option in the app to pay for hosting plans:
We believe the issue with the WordPress app has been resolved. Since the developer removed the display of their service payment options from the app, it is now a free stand-alone app and does not have to offer in-app purchases. We have informed the developer and apologize for any confusion that we have caused.
But users of the app say it never had any in-app purchases at all. The only thing it had were descriptions of WordPress.com Premium offerings, but no way to buy them. Mullenweg said that, before going public, he had asked Apple if removing those mentions would restore the account, and Apple had said it would not.The reinstatement appeared to take Mullenweg by surprise.
In January of 2021, Apple also moved to lower the cut it took for in-app payments from small developers (those making less than $1 million a year in annual sales) to 15%. It was also revealed that Apple quietly cut a special deal with Amazon to charge the retailer a 15% cut for Amazon's Prime Video app.Originally published on the Trust & Safety Foundation website.

Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 29-Apr-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



Publix Gets Social Media Accounts Advertising Its Sandwiches Taken Down For Some Reason

Furnished content.


For sure, the most frustrating examples of dumb trademark disputes are when one party bullies into silence another party for doing something that actually helps the bully. If you need an example of this, you can look to the time Olive Garden tried to take down AllOfGarden.com, a site with a satirical take on the Olive Garden menu. That example is particularly instructive for two reasons. First, AllOfGarden was essentially a tongue-in-cheek love letter to the restaurant chain run by someone who was very much a fan of said chain. Second, Olive Garden eventually apologized and rescinded its threat, due in part to the public backlash and the fact that it must certainly have realized that the site, if anything, helped drive some measure of interest in the restaurant itself.We will have to see if supermarket chain Publix ends up handling this the same way, because it has apparently bullied someone running social media accounts alerting fans to the availability of a particular sandwich into silence.

The account “Are Publix Chicken Tender Subs On Sale?” — with nearly 40,000 followers — has been dormant since March 11. One of its final tweets noted that the subs were, indeed, on sale, and added ominously: “This may be our last Tweet.” Since then, it stopped sharing updates altogether. An accompanying Facebook page also went silent.A big clue about what happened: In another post, the Twitter account said it had received a cease-and-desist order from Publix objecting to a related text-message notification service. The account promised more details “later this week,” but never shared more information. Since then, dozens of hungry Twitter users have tweeted at the account asking where they went, whether everything was OK and earnestly asking which subs might be on sale.
So, who is behind the social media accounts and text messaging service? A 26 years old named Bryan Dickey who also works for marketing firm Postscript in California. According to Dickey, Publix contacted him upset that his texting and social media accounts were alerting the public as to when these chicken tender sandwiches went on sale. He had initially said he was going to keep his social media accounts running while taking down the text message service, but those socials have, again, since gone silent. To be clear, this was something of a commercial operation, though admittedly not much of one.
Dickey tweeted from his personal account earlier this month that Publix was objecting to a related text-message service he set up in January that allowed users to be notified about sub sales if they texted “PUBSUB” to a listed phone number. It wasn’t clear how Dickey was profiting from the service, but apparently that was too much for Publix. He said as early as January 2018 that he was making money off his Publix subs ventures and last year said he had made more than $5,000.“Publix is bullying me with C&D’s for the SMS VIP club. Haven’t talked about it publicly yet. Basically all paths to profitability are legal red taped for now, but I can keep the socials running,” he said.
All the normal excuses for Publix's actions are trotted out in the Tampabay.com post by third parties on the chain's behalf. If the Twitter account or text service suddenly did something offensive, Publix would get the blame. If it didn't go after the use of its name in this case, someone else could argue that Publix had abandoned its trademark.But as we've discussed before, there are other options beyond bullying to death something like this. Working out a way to make the service or social media accounts "legitimate" through cheap or free licenses alleviates the concern about trademark abandonment. Working out an arrangement would similarly allow some flavor of quality control over the content of these accounts.Or, as Publix chose to do, it could silence activity that was actively promoting its own products, almost certainly leading to sales that would have otherwise not occurred.

Read more here

posted at: 12:00am on 29-Apr-2021
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)

0 comments, click here to add the first



April 2021
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
       
 







RSS (site)  RSS (path)

ATOM (site)  ATOM (path)

Categories
 - blog home

 - Announcements  (0)
 - Annoyances  (0)
 - Career_Advice  (0)
 - Domains  (0)
 - Downloads  (3)
 - Ecommerce  (0)
 - Fitness  (0)
 - Home_and_Garden  (0)
     - Cooking  (0)
     - Tools  (0)
 - Humor  (0)
 - Notices  (0)
 - Observations  (1)
 - Oddities  (2)
 - Online_Marketing  (0)
     - Affiliates  (1)
     - Merchants  (1)
 - Policy  (3743)
 - Programming  (0)
     - Bookmarklets  (1)
     - Browsers  (1)
     - DHTML  (0)
     - Javascript  (3)
     - PHP  (0)
     - PayPal  (1)
     - Perl  (37)
          - blosxom  (0)
     - Unidata_Universe  (22)
 - Random_Advice  (1)
 - Reading  (0)
     - Books  (0)
     - Ebooks  (0)
     - Magazines  (0)
     - Online_Articles  (5)
 - Resume_or_CV  (1)
 - Reviews  (2)
 - Rhode_Island_USA  (0)
     - Providence  (1)
 - Shop  (0)
 - Sports  (0)
     - Football  (0)
          - Cowboys  (0)
          - Patriots  (0)
     - Futbol  (0)
          - The_Rest  (0)
          - USA  (0)
 - Technology  (1049)
 - Windows  (1)
 - Woodworking  (0)


Archives
 -2024  March  (164)
 -2024  February  (168)
 -2024  January  (146)
 -2023  December  (140)
 -2023  November  (174)
 -2023  October  (156)
 -2023  September  (161)
 -2023  August  (49)
 -2023  July  (40)
 -2023  June  (44)
 -2023  May  (45)
 -2023  April  (45)
 -2023  March  (53)
 -2023  February  (40)


My Sites

 - Millennium3Publishing.com

 - SponsorWorks.net

 - ListBug.com

 - TextEx.net

 - FindAdsHere.com

 - VisitLater.com