According to a rejection letter from Apple, the Drones+ app has been rejected again from the App Store. The letter described the app as “objectionable and crude.” The app would send users notifications when a US drone makes a strike anywhere in the world. The app has now been rejected three times in one month, which was developed by Josh Begley. In the first rejection, Apple said that the app was ‘not useful.’ The second rejection said that there was a corporate logo hidden. The third rejection now states that the app is crude, according to Wired.
Begley does not understand why the app keeps getting rejected. It does not provide pictures of corpses killed by the drone strikes. Instead, it just provides a notification of a strike, which is gathered from the U.K. Bureau of Investigative Journalism.
“If the content is found to be objectionable, and it’s literally just an aggregation of news, I don’t know how to change that,” Begley said.
When a drone strike happens, the app will catalog it and then provide a map of the strike area. The strike area will be marked with a pin. Users would be able to read media reports on drone strikes as well.
“I wanted to play with this idea of push notifications and push button technology — essentially asking a question about what we choose to get notified about in real time,” Begley said. “I thought reaching into the pockets of U.S. smartphone users and annoying them into drone-consciousness could be an interesting way to surface the conversation a bit more.”
The third rejection letter from Apple was the first time that Begley was told his content was the problem in the app. “I’m kind of back at the drawing board about what exactly I’m supposed to do,” Begley said. Check out the video embedded in our post.
