Apple Takes Down Drone Notification App 'Metadata' From App Store -- Again

After numerous rejections, Apple finally decided to allow a drone-strike notification app back on the App Store Tuesday after it was pulled in 2015 -- and then took it down again hours later.

The app called Metadata, created by Josh Begley from The Intercept, sends a notification every time a U.S. drone strike is reported in the news.

Begley, created the app five years ago and called it Drone+. He said Tuesday in an article for The Intercept Apple rejected the app three times for “excessively objectionable or crude content.”

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However, the app didn’t include graphic images or video and only aggregated news about drone strikes.

“If anything about the app is ‘excessively objectionable or crude,’ perhaps it’s the airstrikes themselves,” wrote Begley.

Begley resubmitted the app multiple times -- even changing the name -- to see if Apple changed its mind. After five rejections, Apple accepted the app in 2014 and remained in the App Store for about a year, with more than 50,000 people downloading it. In September 2015, the app was taken down completely. On Tuesday, after 12 attempts, it was back on the App Store and was taken down just hours later.

When trying to download the app at about 3 p.m. EST on Tuesday App Store said it was not available:

But the app’s story is more than the back and forth struggle with Apple, Begley said before it was taken down again.

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“It is about what can be seen — or obscured — about the geography of our covert wars,” wrote Begley. “For the past 15 years, journalists on the ground in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia have worked hard to uncover the contours of U.S. drone attacks — in some cases at their own peril.”

Begley continued:

“But buried in the details is a difficult truth: no one really knows who most of these missiles are killing. Because the particulars of the drone wars are scant, we only have ‘metadata’ about most of these strikes — perhaps a date, the name of a province, maybe a body count.”