Object to the actual killing all you want - that will continue.Tracking the number of deaths caused by US drone strikes in countries like Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia? There’s an app for that. Or rather, there was – until Apple removed it from its app store.
Metadata+ was launched in early 2014 by Josh Begley, a data artist and research editor for The Intercept. It used data from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism to send push notifications to its users whenever someone was killed by a US drone.
The app was rejected five times under its original name of Drones+, before Apple approved it as Metadata+. A year and a half on, the app has been removed from the App Store, with Begley telling users the cause was “excessively crude or objectionable content” – referring to a specific clause in Apple’s developer rules.
The app used text and maps rather than images of the deaths that it reported, so it could not be considered to be even moderately crude.
A screenshot of Begley’s iTunes Connect account published by Gawker makes it clear that it’s the latter half of the clause that caused the removal. “Your app contains content that many users would find objectionable.”
Begley told Gawker that while Metadata+ will continue to work for people who have already installed it, new users will not be able to download it.
Guardian
If you want to know about "every reported covert US drone strike," you can follow Begley's Dronestream on Twitter. Take a peak.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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