LOS ANGELES — With mainstream media’s infatuation over anything “porn” in the midst of the Stormy Daniels controversy, it comes as no surprise that an off-handed remark by Apple CEO Tim Cook would make headlines — but what has been described by some observers as a softening of policy should not be seen as a sign of encouragement for adult-oriented content publishers.
Steve Jobs, Apple’s founder, was notoriously anti-porn, at least when it came to crafting corporate policies regarding what would, and would not, be considered acceptable fare on the company’s monopolistic App Store, which is the sole software outlet for millions of users of Apple products. Although tech-savvy “hackers” might be able to access other content outlets using Apple devices, few folks relish the idea of voiding the warranty on their new $1,000 phone, making the App Store the only game in town.
If that isn’t good enough for you, then you can take Jobs’ advice: “Folks who want porn can buy an Android phone” — or do what countless consumers already do — forget the apps and fire up the web browser to visit your site of choice.
Cook alluded to this practice while discussing the company’s app review and approval process in a recent MSNBC interview.
“We’re looking at every app in detail. What is it doing, is it doing what it’s saying it’s doing, is it meeting the privacy policy that they’re stating, right? And so, we’re always looking at that,” Cook said. “And we don’t subscribe to the view that you have to let everybody in that wants to or if you don’t, you don’t believe in free speech.”
Cook likened Apple’s App Store to a corner market.
“What you sell in that store says something about you, and if you don’t want to sell that other thing, you don’t sell it,” Cook explained. “It doesn’t mean that you can’t use an iPhone to go to your browser and go to some porno site if you want to do that.”
Responding to the host’s comment that “Nobody does that” and accompanying audience laughter, Cook said, “I’m not making fun of it … I'm just saying that it’s not what we want to put in our store.”
“We want kids to go to the store, right, because kids — there’s a lot of learning, education apps in the store,” Cook added. “And so, we’ve always done that.”
Cook said Apple worked with the music industry to identify explicit content.
“So, a parent could say, ‘I don’t want my child listening to explicit content.’ We make sure all the movies are coded in such a way where you can say, ‘I only want my child looking at G movies,’ or whatever, or we have a parental control around apps. You can say, ‘I don’t want them on these certain apps,” Cook concluded. “And so, this is something we’ve always felt really responsible for.”
The upshot is simple: don’t expect to see porn apps on the App Store just because there’s a new name on the chairman’s door.