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Apple Removed a Photo App from the App Store Because Artistic Nudity Is the Devil or Something

500px, one of the best iPad apps for finding great pictures, was pulled from the App Store today because Apple is Tobias Funke never nude-levels of prudish when it comes to the naked body. Apparently, the app made it too easy to find pictures with nudity in them so it got kicked out.

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500px was notified of the issue when it tried to get an update to the 500px for iOS app updated. Apple said that the updated couldn't be approved because users could search for nude pictures in the app. What's weird is that 500px actually makes it difficult to do so—the app's search engine is "safe" by default. If you want to unlock the safe search, you'd have to log in to the 500px website to make the change. That seems entirely reasonable.

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Apple's official statement, as relayed to TechCrunch, accuses 500px of something much more nefarious though:

The app was removed from the App Store for featuring pornographic images and material, a clear violation of our guidelines. We also received customer complaints about possible child pornography. We've asked the developer to put safeguards in place to prevent pornographic images and material in their app.

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Yeah, we know. No porn allowed in the App Store. Whatever. But it's not like 500px is a cesspool for hardcore pornography. The pictures that you come across in 500px are more artistic than anything you can find on the Internet. 500px isn't the eighth page of Google Search Results or some lonely kid's fetish Tumblr. It's one of the most elegant photo apps on iOS and Apple kicked it out of the App Store because of a couple of boobies. Nice. [TechCrunch]