How did this porn app get on my iPhone? – POLITICO Europe
The EU’s digital competition law means users can now download a pornography video app in Europe. It’s a sexual revolution — European Union-style.Users of Apple’s iOS devices in the EU got access this week to a porn app for the first time, called Hot Tub.Behind the app’s arrival is a regime mandated under the EU’s digital competition law, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which seeks to break the power of Big Tech giants that limit access to other firms’ technologies in anti-competitive ways.Enter Hot Tub. Since Monday, the porn app can be downloaded through an alternative app store called AltStore PAL. Downloading it takes a couple more steps than getting apps through Apple’s own App Store, but it’s still easily available. Once installed, Hot Tub asks for a self-declaration of age, and then up pops a list of videos from the popular porn video platform PornHub.Apple has been fighting tooth and nail against such alternative app stores. It has argued it threatens the safety and security of iPhone users.“We certainly do not approve of this app and would never offer it in our App Store. The truth is that we are required by the European Commission to allow it,” Apple spokesperson Emma Wilson said in a statement.The tech giant is “deeply concerned about the safety risks that hardcore porn apps of this type create for EU users, especially kids,” Wilson said.But adult content creators argue that alternative app stores allow them to get past Apple’s draconian moderation standards.“Audio erotica apps cannot have the word ‘desire’ in their names [if they want] to be visible on the store,” while developers of apps like those for controlling sex toys “have a hard time having the apps approved on the store, which puts their entire product in jeopardy,” said Ana Ornelas, erotic author, sex educator and advocacy officer for the Digital Intimacy Coalition.According to Alessandro Polidoro, a lawyer and coordinator of the Digital Intimacy Coalition, “other apps that host adult content — like X and Reddit — are still allowed on the official App Store, so Apple’s moral argument seems quite contradictory.”The techies behind the alternative app store said there were still appropriate controls for users, notably through Apple’s device-level parental controls, which allow parents to remotely turn on content restrictions for their kids’ phones.The Hot Tub app “is rated 17+ and is subject to the exact same parental controls as any other App Store app. So if you put parental controls on your iPhone to restrict 17+ you cannot install Hot Tub,” said Riley Testut, one of the alternative store’s two co-founders.Apple’s parental controls can extend within apps, however, such as setting limits on screen time, but not for those downloaded through alternative stores.Social media companies including TikTok, Meta and X took part in an election stress test on Friday.Independent MEP Fidias Panayiotou met the billionaire in 2023 and has taken his line on some big political issues, from Ukraine to digital rules. Planned nationwide embargo on TikTok is an “abuse of power” and will suppress free speech, opposition warns.The “chameleon” tech billionaire is one of the most powerful politically connected people in the world. Europe’s governments are still working out how to deal with being on his bad side.
Source: https://www.politico.eu/article/iphone-apple-eu-ios-dma-big-tech-anti-competition-pornhub-users-app/
