Biggest iPhone App Store FAIL yet: Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” was approved

Dear App Store: What the heck are you doing? You routinely delay or reject practical, interesting candidates, but allow passage for fart programs, cheesy joke apps, and other equally tasteless entries. You even recently denied an iPhone guide for having the audacity to include the word “iPhone” in the title. And yet, you allow Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” into the store?

To be fair, the ebook — which was in Spanish and titled “Mi Lucha” — has since been yanked. But the big question is how did it get in there to begin with? As Tech Crunch points out, Apple denied the Someecards app partially because it poked fun of Hitler, among others. (The official line is that it “contains objectionable content and content that ridicules public figures.”) Wait, so making fun of Hitler is not okay, but putting the Nazi dictator’s book on the virtual shelves is just fine? If this isn’t considered “objectionable content” then what is?

I heard the argument that maybe the confusion was due to its Spanish language translation. Sorry, I don’t buy it. Even if a huge corporation like Apple wasn’t able to hire translators or multilingual evaluators, the big giant swastika icon should’ve given it away.

Apparently it didn’t. Not only did the anti-semitic tome get approved, but — get this — it was apparently considered fine family fare: Some genius in the Approvals Dept tagged it for ages 9+.

Just for the record, I’m not into censorship. I do believe books should be widely available, and disgusting or no, this an historical work. So I don’t want to engage in a censorship debate or the controversial book’s questionable literary merits. I am, however, expressing my endless befuddlement by the App Store’s lack of logic in approving apps: Get it together, Apple. This was an epic, epic FAIL.

Via: TechCrunch, TheNextWeb, Edible Apple