iPod itunes store censoring reviews?

madoka said:

I wrote a review questioning why itunes could charge $50 for a TV show (e.g. Family Guy, American Dad, Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, etc.) when the same show is available for free (via Hulu). They never published this review.

Was I in violation of some review rule or does Apple censor reviews?

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Well, asking something that they have little control over, would qualify as an irrelevant review in my opinion. Apple doesn't set the prices it's the content providers that set the prices.

Also, Hulu isn't free. All that stuff is paid for via advertisements, similar to broadcast TV. Kinda pisses me off that even paying for Hulu Plus, I have to sit through commercials.

madoka said:

I wrote a review questioning why itunes could charge $50 for a TV show (e.g. Family Guy, American Dad, Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, etc.) when the same show is available for free (via Hulu). They never published this review.

Was I in violation of some review rule or does Apple censor reviews?

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When u pay $50 u own it, hulu is like netflix, u don't own it butnu can watch it, big difference.

Apple will censor reviews that contain competitor products. I know that, because I have said that I love that I got the same game from the Amazon Appstore, and now it's on the Mac for me also to enjoy. It got removed.

madoka said:

I wrote a review questioning why itunes could charge $50 for a TV show (e.g. Family Guy, American Dad, Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, etc.) when the same show is available for free (via Hulu). They never published this review.

Was I in violation of some review rule or does Apple censor reviews?

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All iTunes Store reviews are screened. You don't just write review, hit the POST button and then it magically appears on the iTunes Store, it doesn't happen like that.

There is always a delay, sometimes an hour or two, sometimes much longer, before your review is screened and OK'ed to appear online. I'm sure that most of the posts that are flagged are the ones with profanity, flagged cuss words, extremely angry rants, and other rated-R material, etc.

All my reviews have posted without problems. Then again, I post reviews that are actually reviews, not some rant that is irrelevant to the album/app/music that is being reviewed, or some profanity-filled cussing diatribe about how this band sucks and this singer is a she-dog.

You pay $50 to own the tv show, Hulu is ad-supported rent of the show.
Is like saying why they charge for Breaking Bad on iTunes when it's free on TV if I have cable and have AMC as a channel...

Also, AFAIK you would need to own said show for a review to be posted.

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Bilalo said:

When u pay $50 u own it, hulu is like netflix, u don't own it butnu can watch it, big difference.

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hulu is NOT like netflix, hulu+ is the one similar to netflix.

In their terms and conditions they pretty much say they can (but are not obliged to) do whatever they want to when they receive a submitted review or when they receive a complaint about a posted review. The results of their vetting may therefore be a little uneven, even though by now they probably have pretty detailed guidelines for the overseers to follow.

Sometimes it's absurd. They caution you not to use crude language but then they mess up and asterisk out stuff like the Latin word for "with" in some phrase, because out of context it is a crude English word. Also, it can take quite awhile for them to remove an offensive comment even if it's pretty blatant.

I wrote a couple times to complain about one review, two months apart. I think the second time I was exasperated and added something like "If Steve Jobs saw this post, he'd have your &ss." Finally they took it down. As they tell you up front, they're not obliged to do so. Still, if some review is way out of line and you write in to complain, they will take it down.

madoka said:

I wrote a review questioning why itunes could charge $50 for a TV show (e.g. Family Guy, American Dad, Simpsons, Bob's Burgers, etc.) when the same show is available for free (via Hulu). They never published this review.

Was I in violation of some review rule or does Apple censor reviews?

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Think about it. Did you write a review? By the sounds of it you didn't. You criticised their pricing. That's not a review. Anyone can see their price. I can't see without watching whether that show is funny, boring, tedious, interesting and so on. That's what reviews are for.

I wouldn't call it "censorship", I would call it "removing garbage".

Solomani said:

All my reviews have posted without problems. Then again, I post reviews that are actually reviews, not some rant that is irrelevant to the album/app/music that is being reviewed, or some profanity-filled cussing diatribe about how this band sucks and this singer is a she-dog.

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One of the worst things was reviews for things in the "12 days of Christmas" promotion. People who are worse than idiots marking a perfectly fine book down because it wasn't the kind of book they usually read. Or rating a singer's live performance down because they would have preferred a studio performance. And that for things they received for free.