Where the capability to share porn exists, porn will be shared.
That's an unwritten law of the internet, and Apple may finally be starting to accept it; a photo-sharing app pulled from the App Store last week due to concerns over pornographic images was, on Tuesday, restored.
The app was originally pulled from the iTunes store "for featuring pornographic images and material," according to Apple. There were even reports of child pornography, according to The Verge, though the app's co-founder, Evgeny Tchebotarev, told the site he had found no evidence of it.
And though the restored version of 500px came with some changes, it appears no major compromises were made, and the questionable material was still present when the app was returned to the store.
Ch-ch-changes
The main change to 500px is the new 17 and over age rating, the highest rating available on the App Store.
The app's description has been altered to reflect the new rating, and it now indicates that 500px includes "frequent/intense sexual content or nudity."
Users who download the app will be greeted with a pop-up message notifying them of the new rating, while those subject to parental controls may be unable to download it at all.
This change in particular was reportedly insisted upon by Apple, in addition to a new "report" button that will allow users to notify the app's creators of any material they find objectionable.
There's one more change under the hood: much like with Google's recent image search changes, it's more difficult to get adult images to appear in 500px, according to Tchebotarev speaking to The Verge.
The 500px app's "safesearch" is still off by default, but to access images deemed adult, users have to make an account and opt in to adult content in their settings menus on the app's website.
Climbing the Vine
The 500px porn controversy echoes another one going on at the same time: the hubbub surrounding Twitter's video-sharing Vine app.
Videos ranging from full-on pornography to relatively innocent - but still undeniably adult - clips were uploaded to Vine starting immediately upon its launch last week.
Vine responded by blocking certain search terms, like #porn and #sex, but as of Tuesday Apple had yet to take an official stance.
Meanwhile, 500px's Tchebotarev complained that Vine still has a 12-plus rating while 500px was forced into a more strict 17-plus.
Obviously Twitter has more clout, but either way, it will be interesting to see where Apple ultimately lands on the porn issue.
