> Apple's App Store that prohibits astrology apps

That's curious. What legitimate-sounding reason could Apple have to reject astrology on their platform? Isn't this exactly the kind of discrimination against fields of endeavour that would make a slam-dunk case for any antitrust enforcement?

A few years ago there were horoscope apps with a 3-day free trial, then pay per week subscriptions, that had tens of thousands of suspicious 5 star reviews.

Some of them even made it into the top 20 grossing apps on the store.

All the reviews with text would complain about accidentally subscribing.

Apple was earning a 30% commission on those subscriptions.

Only new submissions seem to be banned because Apple says there are too many. Clearly there are loads if you search the App Store. Gruber quotes and I re-quote:

> Certain kinds of apps, such as dating, flashlight, sound effects, wallpaper, simple timers, and fortune telling, are well established on the App Store and we will not accept new submissions unless they offer a meaningfully different or improved experience. We may remove these apps from the App Store going forward if they are not updated, improved, or do not attract customers. Other kinds of apps, such as drinking games, Kama Sutra, fart, and burp apps, are mediocre, low-quality, or low-effort and do not add value to the App Store.

> Isn't this exactly the kind of discrimination against fields of endeavour that would make a slam-dunk case for any antitrust enforcement?

No.

The same reason apple could reasonably block people from selling anything with an easily falsifiable claim: misleading consumers is bad, and apps that are misleading aren’t allowed. That already exists.

Telling people you can tell them their future based on the stars is demonstrably misleading lol.

They don’t prohibit them.

There are categories of app that already have 100 trillion low effort copy-paste slop apps.

In those categories, Apple applies a more stringent “must demonstrate some real differentiation” criteria. They also prune those categories of existing apps more aggressively.

It’s fair to wonder what counts, and how uniformly they apply it, but the motivation is not, “no astrology apps.”

This guy pumped out slop for a high-slop category. It got rejected. That’s where it started.

All the bullshit and lies from everyone snowballed from that.