A new report from the nonprofit research group Tech Transparency Project (TTP) claims that Google and Apple\u2019s app stores go beyond simply hosting harmful \u201cnudify\u201d and \u201cundress\u201d apps that remove women\u2019s clothing in images, and actually encourage users to download those apps. In January, TTP published research that showed how the app stores host dozens of \u201cnudify\u201d and undressing apps. This new research, released on Wednesday and first reported by Bloomberg, shows how the stores don\u2019t just passively host those apps, but push them toward users through search and advertising.\u00a0\ud83d\udca1Do you have experience to share about nudify or undress apps being used in schools, or by teens? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at sam.404. Otherwise, send me an email at sam@404media.co.TTP conducted a series of searches in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, according to their writeup of the research, using terms like \u201cnudify,\u201d \u201cundress,\u201d and \u201cdeepnude.\u201d\u00a0 After testing the apps that appeared in the top 10 search results, they found that \u201croughly 40 percent of the apps that came up in both the Apple and Google Play search results could render women nude or scantily clad,\u201d and that \u201cApple and Google ran ads for nudify apps in some of the search results\u2014including, in Google\u2019s case, a carousel of ads for some of the most sexually explicit apps encountered in the investigation.\u201d They also found that the stores can lead users to more and different nudify apps through autocomplete search queries.\u201cTTP found that ads for nudify apps came up as the top result in three of the Apple searches. Apple, which controls all of the advertising in its app store, is selling and placing these ads,\u201d the researchers wrote. \u201cApple says it prohibits ad content that \u2018promotes adult-oriented themes or graphic content.\u2019 But TTP\u2019s findings suggest Apple is not always enforcing that policy.\u201d The first result for an App Store search for \u201cdeepfake,\u201d they found, was for an app that easily replaces women\u2019s clothed images with nude versions.\u00a0In 2024, 404 Media covered how Google surfaced apps through searches for \u201cundress apps,\u201d \u201cbest deepfake nudes,\u201d and similar terms with promoted results, despite Google\u2019s ad policies against this type of content.\u00a0Nudify apps became a popular market for years, but today, they\u2019re extremely easy to access and are advertised on social media. In schools, children use nudify apps to bully classmates with disastrous results for both the bullies and the victims, and school administrators are often unprepared for how to deal with students using these wildly popular apps.\u00a0Google and Apple did not immediately respond to 404 Media\u2019s request for comment. TTP wrote that Apple declined to comment, while Google spokesperson Dan Jackson told them many of the apps identified by TTP have been suspended. “When violations of our policies are reported to us, we investigate and take appropriate action,” Jackson told TTP.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"