Apple has begun regulating apps related to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) that are unrecognised by official institutions. According to a report by CNBC, the fruit company has been begun rejecting these unofficial apps, saying that they must be released by proper health organisations and governments.
The move by the Cupertino company is part of a greater effort to curtail the spread of misinformation as other tech giants begin to do the same. One example is Google; it was discovered that the search engine began disabling searches for apps affiliated with the words “Coronavirus” or “COVID-19”.
Typically, some of these unofficial apps allow iPhone users to views statistics and information about countries with confirmed cases of the Coronavirus. With information curated from data made public by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
For now, the crackdown seems to be effective. Apple’s App Store has already begun displaying fewer results for such apps. Unsurprisingly, some app developers aren’t happy with Apple’s decision, sympathetic as they are with it.
On that note, Apple’s App Store policies are known to be rather stringent, with Daniel Ek, Spotify CEO once saying that it “purposely limits choice and stifles innovation at the expense of the user experience”.
(Source: CNBC)
