New Apple App Store Rules Crack Down on Nastiness Like Nudification
New Apple App Store Rules Crack Down on Nastiness Like Nudification
Mike Pearl Sun, October 18, 2026 at 9:13 AM UTC
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©Jess Rodriguez via ShutterstockApple’s cut from App Store purchases in 2024 was estimated at $10 billion. In other words, just by providing and maintaining a place for third-party app developers to do the real work, Apple brings in roughly the amount Campbell’s, the soup company, made in total revenue that same year.
Apple’s cut from App Store purchases in 2024 was estimated at $10 billion. In other words, just by providing and maintaining a place for third-party app developers to do the real work, Apple brings in roughly the amount Campbell’s, the soup company, made in total revenue that same year. That makes the App Store an amazing deal for Apple.
But some new rules around nudification and bait-and-switch apps make store upkeep sound like it’s becoming more and more of a squalid business.
The new guidelines on nudification, spotted by 9to5Mac read as follows:
“Apps that enable users to create, generate, upload, share, or otherwise contribute content present particular challenges, including intellectual property infringement, nonconsensual intimate imagery, and anonymous bullying.”
Apple has also added rules around apps that purport to do one thing—for instance, something other than making pictures of people look naked—and then turn out to do another—such as making pictures of people look naked. The new rules ban “hidden, dormant, or undocumented features,” and violating them can be “grounds for removal of your app from the App Store and termination of your developer account.”
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As 9to5Mac points out, some of this was spelled out in older rules if you went through them with a fine-toothed comb, but highlighting these issues and outlining the dire consequences of breaking these rules suggests Apple has had its hands full. And a January report from the Tech Transparency Project purported to find 47 apps in the Apple App Store that were indeed designed to make pictures of clothed people look naked or near-naked.
The timing couldn’t be worse. As now-ex-CEO Tim Cook said in June, “developers are building more apps than ever, with well over 1,000 submissions to the App Store every hour.” Indeed, Sensor Tower data reported by the Information says that the number of new app submissions, which had been trending flat for years, started climbing in 2025, and then shot up 86% in the first quarter of this year.
And earlier this year, Apple moved to block certain AI coding tools. This enforcement, which seems more aimed at slowing the onslaught of apps the company has to moderate, as opposed to dealing with clear quality issues in the vibe coding apps themselves, was criticized as inconsistent and opaque.
An interesting March op-ed from CNBC describes the App Store’s dilemma from a pro-vibe coding perspective, seeming to suggest that a gnarlier App Store is inevitable, and that Apple can’t just enforce its way out of what’s coming:
“If Apple keeps blocking these tools, the builders may just leave. They’ll build on the web and for the web, where no one needs Apple’s permission to ship. The iPhone user may end up with a worse app ecosystem because Apple chased away the people who were filling it.”
If you’re someone who loves the feeling of Apple’s “walled garden” this may be a chilling thought. If Apple really must embrace AI, and is in no position to fight the rising tide of sketchiness in its App Store, a chaotic new era may be on the horizon whether Apple likes it or not.
Source: “AOL Money”
