500px, a popular photography application for iOS, has been removed from the Apple App Store by the Cupertino firm based on allegations that it allowed easy access to nude photos.
"The app was removed from the App Store for featuring pornographic images and material, a clear violation of our guidelines," Apple said in a statement. "We also received customer complaints about possible child pornography. We've asked the developer to put safeguards in place to prevent pornographic images and material in their app."
500px has maintained its innocence, with the firm never hosting purely pornographic pictures, with the nude images which are published being artistic in nature and not vulgar.
"We don’t allow pornographic images. If something is purely pornographic, it’s against our terms and it’s deleted," said 500px COO Evgeny Tchebotarev. The company continued: "We take the issue of child pornography incredibly seriously. There has never been an issue or one complaint to us about child pornography. Although it has never happened, a complaint of this nature would be taken very seriously and would immediately be escalated to appropriate law enforcement agency. In all our conversations with Apple a concern about child exploitation was never mentioned."
500px, which has been downloaded over a million times, relies on its users to flag inappropriate images, but also offers an opt-out policy for nude images, which is enabled by default. The app itself has been available on iOS for nearly 16 months.
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