The Intercept’s Josh Begley wrote an upbeat column on the morning of March 28 exclaiming that after 12 failures, Apple had finally accepted his app, Metadata.
At 2:32 that afternoon, however, the journalist and app maker’s aspirations were crushed by the gatekeeper that is Apple.
— Josh Begley (@joshbegley) March 28, 2017
In the past, Apple had justified the removal by saying the content was “excessively objectionable or crude,” even though, as Begley points out, the app does not show pictures or videos. It merely aggregates the articles about drones that have already been reported, then sends it to your phone as a push notification.
But for the app’s creator, “the story of this app is about more than a petty conflict with Apple.” Instead, Begley believes the big theme is what Americans can see about the nature of Washington’s “covert wars.”
US President Donald Trump has moved to roll back restrictions on the use of drones, meaning news about drone strikes could be as relevant as ever, especially considering the ongoing armed conflicts in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia. Over a two day period in March, the US conducted 30 airstrikes against Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula forces in Yemen, Sputnik reported.
Apple did not immediately respond to an inquiry into the rationale behind the decision to take down Begley’s app.
