Apple accused of promoting ‘scam apps’ on App Store – morningtidings

Cupertino-based tech giant Apple is being accused of promoting apps that come with disproportionately expensive subscriptions on the App Store and not offering much functionality. This is something the iPhone maker was accused of previously in February as well when numerous developers had come forward to raise the issue of how Apple was not blocking apps like these from being published.
What is the issue?
The issue has been re-ignited as Apple’s Australian App Store published a featured article called “Slime relaxations” that promoted a certain category of apps that do not offer much in terms of the functions but come loaded with costly in-app purchases subscriptions.
According to a report by Ars Technica one of the apps from this article — called Jelly: Slime Simulator, ASMR — is filled with ads that pop up in succession one after the other “before allowing the user to interact with it in any meaningful way.” In order to get rid of this, the app store listing shows there is a weekly charge of $12.99 on the Australian Apple Store.
In a Twitter thread app developer, Simeon highlighted this and accused Apple of making it hard for people to trust the developers.

Scam apps on Apple App Store
Earlier in February, a well-known developer Kosta Eleftheriou had highlighted a scam app for the Apple Watch and after it was widely reported on Twitter, Apple removed it.
Back then, Apple in a statement defended the safeguards it offers on the App Store and said, ”We take feedback regarding fraudulent activity seriously, and investigate and take action on each report. The App Store is designed to be a safe and trusted place for users to get apps, and a great opportunity for developers to be successful. We do not tolerate fraudulent activity on the App Store, and have stringent rules against apps and developers who attempt to cheat the system. In 2020 alone, we terminated over half a million developer accounts for fraud, and removed over 60 million user reviews that were considered spam. As part of our ongoing efforts to maintain the integrity of our platform, our Discovery Fraud team actively works to remove these kinds of violations, and is constantly improving their process along the way.”