App Store guideline 1.2: User-Generated Content

What it means

• The guideline covers social media, platforms for user-generated content and AI content creation apps. The problems it names are infringement of intellectual property, intimate imagery shared without consent, and bullying under cover of anonymity.
• Four safeguards are required: a way to filter objectionable material before it is posted, a way to report offensive content with timely responses, the ability to block abusive users, and published contact information.
• Services that end up mostly used for pornography, random or anonymous chat in the style of Chatroulette, rating real people by looks (the 'hot-or-not' example), physical threats or bullying are described as not belonging on the App Store.
• An app with user content from a web service may show incidental mature content, if that content is hidden by default and only appears once the user turns it on on the website.
• The developer is responsible for removing content that breaks the guideline, the app's own terms of service or its own community standards.

What reviewers look at

The guideline says services of the kind listed above may be taken down without notice.

If reviewers find violating content, the text says they will ask for its removal and for a plan to improve compliance. Depending on the answer, the app can be pulled from the store until improvement is shown. Severe or repeated behavior is grounds for immediate removal from the store and from the Apple Developer Program.

Related guidelines

• Guideline 1.2.1: Creator Content

Apple's text

This page is an unofficial explanation in our own words. Unofficial explanation, not affiliated with Apple. Apple's text prevails. Apple's wording is on its page, linked below.

• Apple's App Review Guidelines, guideline 1.2

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