Category: Activism

Posted on

Quick update about the transphobic app on the Apple Store

With respectable turnaround time, the app started vanishing off the store and by now appears to be well and thoroughly gone. I’m rather stunned as well that the issue even surfaced on the site for GLAAD, right here, and that they linked back to Dara as well.

I’m with Dara: if Apple’s going to have a walled garden approach to the App store, and a policy specifically against defamatory apps, they better be on top of what they let into the garden. But I have to say they responded to this pretty quickly, and I have to give them marks for that. Looks like I keep the iPhone a while longer!

Thanks to all of you who took the time to respond to this issue. You get the Aubrey Hero icon! Go you.

Posted on

Apple, this is not even remotely acceptable

userinfosolarbird has already posted about this, but I’m signal-boosting: she and I heard today via this post by userinforollick that a particularly repulsive, transphobic app has shown up on the Apple store.

Its whole point is apparently to point and laugh at the “trannies” by letting you insert pictures of “trannies” in allegedly hilarious poses into your own actual photos. Because pointing and laughing at the transgendered is so much of a laugh riot!

(Protip: Not so much.)

I’m quite disgusted by this, and I say this as a geek who’s typing this post as she speaks on her MacBook, and who carries around an indispensable iPhone in her pocket at all times, and who is seriously wondering if she wants an iPad. But this kind of bigoted crap being allowed to get onto the Apple app store is exactly the kind of crap that makes me think that maybe my next computer should be running Linux, and maybe my next phone should be a Droid.

I’ll be calling to voice my displeasure in the morning, to back up Dara on the phone call she’s already made. She has the appropriate number to call in her post, but I’ll echo it here as well: +1 (408) 974-2042.

Please spread the word. Thanks.