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App (store) policy histories

Digital Methods Summer School 2019, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 8 July 2019.

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Evolution of privacy policies (NYTimes, 12 June 2019)

Privacy policies of major tech and media platforms

A recent opinion piece in the The New York Times looked at the evolution of privacy policies of major tech and media platforms, including for Apple and Google.

For instance, Google’s privacy policy increased from a mere two-minute read in 1999 to a 30-minute read before GDPR was introduced a year ago (in May 2018).
The author also compared the readability of these policies to literary classics, such as Pride and Prejudice, and Harry Potter.

Given the importance of apps and app data, the way these policies are written, structured, and made available is quite significant.

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Kevin Litman-Navarro (June 12, 2019), ‘We Read 150 Privacy Policies. They Were an Incomprehensible Disaster’, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/12/opinion/facebook-google-privacy-policies.html

Aims

Key governance dimensions

Technical (e.g. Apple Pay, no outlinks, app performance requirements, etc.)
Business models and monetisation (e.g. pricing models, app store monetisation, in-app purchases, etc.)
Content (e.g. prohibited content, etc.)
Legal (e.g. compliance with local laws and regulations, GDPR/CCPR, COPA, etc.)

Evolution of platform policies (January 2019)

Envisioned outcomes

Analysis of the networkedness of policy documents – evolving relationship networks (e.g. interdependencies, layeredness)
Analysis of the contents, distinguishing by section and governance type – evolving (growing, shrinking) sections and paragraphs over time (e.g. additions, deletions, transformations, revisions, specifications)
Narrating and visualising specific stories of app store governance

Play Store Top Charts

iTunes Charts