On this weeks Accidental Tech Podcast (191: The Failure Mode of a Train), Casey, John and Marco talked about the controversy around Apple closing the App Store account of developer Kapeli. (I’ve mostly been out of the loop on this thing so most of my knowledge of it comes from said ATP episode.)

The discussion was informative but part of it left me feeling uneasy. My problem was that it seamed like all three hosts thought it was perfectly reasonable for Apple to be able to dictate what the developer expressed in public, if he wanted a chance to get his account back.

This seems so wrong to me. Either the developer broke the rules is such a way that it way right to close his account and that’s that, or he did not break the rules in such a way and therefore his account should be reinstated regardless of what he says or does in public.

Having an eight-hundred pound gorilla like Apple dictate what its developers should write on their blogs if they are ever in a controversy with them seems so wrong, regardless of whether what Apple wanted this particular developer was 100% true, 100% false or anything in-between. The App Store rules system is already iffy enough, should we also accept that Apple can dictate our complaints in public?

I was glad to hear the Manton Reece seems to agree with me as he argues similarly on this weeks Core Intuition (Episode 254: It Blew Up In This Case). (Overcast link with timestamp.