What if you want an iPhone app Apple rejects? Consider the case of one net neutrality app

Apple’s mobile-app marketplace has boundaries that Apple alone sets. A free network-diagnostic tool called Wehe is supposed to tell if your Internet provider is interfering with certain video apps' traffic, say on YouTube or Netflix, a question on the minds of people who argued for keeping the recently repealed net neutrality regulations designed to prevent providers from slowing or blocking legal content.  Northeastern University computer-science professor David Choffnes had shipped a version of this net-neutrality monitoring tool for Android app months ago without incident. But when he submitted a version for iOS, Apple rejected it. Apple’s rationale, expressed in a message Choffnes shared in a forwarded screenshot, was that Wehe “may mislead users by providing inaccurate determinations.” That may not make much sense if you’ve had, say, the Yelp or TripAdvisor apps on your iPhone offer “inaccurate determinations” about a restaurant or hotel. But the App Store is Apple’s world, and it gets to make the rules there. Its app-review guidelines run almost 10,000 words, but the important ones are these: “We will reject apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line.” Choffnes had tried to appeal this rejection since the first thumbs-down in December, but the only thing that changed Apple’s mind was him going public, which yielded a bout of uncomplimentary stories about Apple’s rejection of an app meant to defend net neutrality. Finally, it had approved the app, and the resulting rush of installs left the Wehe servers struggling to deal with the new traffic.