Just last week, following all the controversy stirred up by Wikileaks making public diplomatic cables between the U.S. and other countries, an unofficial app for the nonprofit media freedom site appeared in the iOS store for $1.99.
And just as quickly, and with as little fanfare, Apple has made the little app disappear. Wikileaks App has been removed from the App Store, although we still have a copy of its description here.
As a writer over at TechCrunch pointed out, the app was selling what Wikileaks provides for free, although it did do you the favor of aggregating it into one place. The app featured access to wikileaks.org, the site that publishes leaked government information for the benefit of public knowledge. It also pulled in updates from the Wikileaks Twitter account, as well as any updates from other people using the #wikileaks topic tag.
It’s not exactly clear why the app was pulled, and it seems no one has been able to get a comment out of Apple (AAPL) just yet. The nature of the app -- charging two dollars to get to something that is made available for free by Wikileaks on the moral principle that it should be -- might have been enough for Apple to knock it out of the App Store.
Or, Apple might have pulled the app because of all the controversy surrounding the site as late. Wikileaks.org suffered some serious web hosting and hacking attacks earlier this month, and finally secured hosting in Sweden after being dropped by Amazon and others here in the U.S.
Also eager to cut ties with Wikileaks were companies like Mastercard (MA), Visa (V), PayPal and Bank of America (BAC), and stories about Amazon’s (AMZN) dropping Wikileaks’ web hosting account blame political pressure from the U.S. as the major reason behind it. It wouldn’t be surprising if Apple was doing its best to dodge a bullet before it’s fired, sidestepping any controversy early.
As with all good conspiracy theories, we’ll likely never know the truth -- unless Apple decides to tell us. That doesn’t seem too likely, however, regardless of the company’s stance.
discussiPhone
I am not surprised at all that Apple would want to remove this App from the App Store. Apple tries so hard to maintain and promote their image that being attached to something such as Wikileaks is bad press.
Also, it may be possible that they allowed it with the intention of removing it because this way Apple gains the extra PR from taking the App away. If they had never allowed it in the beginning this would have been a much smaller story...I know this is not a super likely scenario, but it would have been an excellent marketing strategy if it was!
Adam Wagner
blogger at www.discusstheiphone.com