Pixilation added by ourselves.
ImagineWind, the twitpic voyeur service with a Windows Phone 7 client, has now finally been removed from Marketplace.
Microsoft has given notice of their intent last week, saying the the images streamed were often too racy, despite the disclaimer ImageWind provides at start-up:
Microsoft said:
Imagewind – app unpublish request
[..] While the images shown are dynamic, per your app’s disclaimer, a portion of the images’ content is too graphic for the app to be permissible in Marketplace. In order to be permissible, there would need to be a content filter before surfacing images since users are not querying a specific type of image and are rather pushed to them.Given this, we ask that you unpublish your app within one business day until you are able to modify your application to comply with the certification guidelines.[..]
Thank you for your understanding in the matter, and we will hope to see an updated version soon.
Windows Phone Marketplace Policy team
The developer Roger Peters asked for a delay for Microsoft to reconsider, but on Friday Microsoft replied, saying after review they have still decided the app was unfit for the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, and an hour later removed it from the app store.
While the action is regrettable we can understand Microsoft’s position – Marketplace lacks any parental controls, unlike the iOS App Store, meaning minors could easily be exposed to the unfiltered image stream, which unlike the browser Microsoft does bear some liability for. Roger Peters has earlier said filtering the twitter stream was logistically impossible.
For the curious the service is still available online, and Peters has made the XAP available for the homebrew crew.
Read more about the issue at SmartypantsCoding here.