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"The official 500px iOS app is back in the App Store.\nApple kicked the app out of the App Store last week, citing concerns that it was too easy for end-users to find nudity within the app. The removal highlighted some of the review inequalities that still plague the App Store nearly five years into its run. \nSEE ALSO: 500px Removal Highlights App Store Inequalities\nWe spoke to Evgeny Tchebotarev, 500px co-founder and COO, about the removal process and the changes the 500px team needed to make to get the app back in Apple's good graces.\nThe Required Changes\nOriginally, the app was pulled from the App Store was because Apple said it was too easy for regular users to browse for nude images. Like many other apps with photo communities, including Tumblr and Flickr, some of the photographers who use 500px take photographs that contain nudity \u2014 not pornographic images, but nudity nonetheless.\nTchebotarev made some changes to the app to make it harder to find nude images.\nThe company also had to change the rating on its app. The old rating was 4+, which indicated it was fit for all users. While the company initially asked for a 12+ content rating \u2014 the same rating Flickr has \u2014 Apple asked the company to make the rating 17 and up.\nTchebotarev wasn't happy about having to make that change, telling Mashable \"it's not an accurate statement for our app and for new users, it could turn them off if they think the app has content it doesn't have,\" but the team went along with the change because it wanted to get the app back in the store as soon as possible.\nOn Friday, Apple reached out again, asking 500px to add a \"report\" feature to the app for offensive or pornographic content. The 500px website already has this feature and according to Tchebotarev, most offensive material is flagged by its community soon after upload.\nNevertheless, the company made the change to the app. Every image on 500px's iOS apps now have a \"report\" option. Tchebotarev said that adding the report feature to the app was already on the roadmap but was expedited to meet Apple's request.\n\nLessons Learned\nTchebotarev is relieved the app is back in the App Store. \"We're really glad we can continue a good working relationship with Apple,\" he said. \"They are such a big company, not having them as a partner can really make or break a startup and we saw that firsthand.\"\nWhile Tchebotarev says that 500px itself didn't receive any sustained traffic or new user signups from the publicity related to this controversy, he did say that ISO500 \u2014 an app that was threatened with removal but was allowed to stay in the App Store \u2014 had 1000x install growth. 500px acquired ISO500 and its team at the end of 2012.\nThe situation faced by Tchebotarev and the 500px team is not wholly unique. In the age of user-generated content in apps, explicit material can and will get uploaded.\nLook at Vine \u2014 Twitter's new quick-video sharing service. It took only 48 hours for porn to invade the service, leaving the Vine team to scramble to block common hashtag searches and add in methods to report offensive content.\nIt doesn't help that the App Store's rating system is still seemingly arbitrarily applied (Vine has a 12+ rating). Perhaps Apple should consider adding a UGC rating type to the App Store. This way, users would be aware that because the app contains user-generated content, it might not always be suitable for all audiences. App developers would still need to take the effective precautions to delete illegal content and explicit pornography, but users would be aware of what they are getting.\nFor Tchebotarev, he's just happy 500px for iOS [iTunes link] is back in the App Store.\nPhoto composite by Mashable, Christina Warren"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/01/29/500px-back-app-store/>