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.

“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.”

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.

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