Universal Fabulous "Editors Choice" app bypasses App Store rules and uses numerous dark patterns? Please poke holes in this theory!

[hardwickj]

Ok, I'm legitimately flabbergasted that the app Fabulous was even allowed on the App Store, let alone it was picked "Editors Choice"! Let me break this down step by step with photos...

The other night I'm scrolling through social media and stumble upon the following ad:

I think, hey, cool, that actually works. So I click the link and it takes me to the app:

Well that's odd. This doesn't appear to have anything to do with reading. Whatever, it's an Editors Choice app and has 75k reviews, I'll download it and try it anyways. It must be a feature regardless, right? So I install the app and go through its setup process. Then it gets to the trial part:

Well that's odd. "Try for two weeks" but then it says "Use Free for 7 Days". Part of me wonders if this is some sort of dark pattern intended to trick you into an accidental subscription payment. Whatever, I keep going...

Uh...wait a second. That's not a free trial. The minimum they allow you to pick is $1. This is getting kinda sketch.

Here's where it gets interesting. They allow you to pay a variety of ways. As far as I'm aware, none of these use either In-App Payments or the In-App subscription mechanism. Yes, you CAN use ApplePay, but as far as I can tell, it's not operating within the In-App system. If that assumption is correct, then is this not in direct violation of App Store rules? At the time of payment though, I was not aware of this...

At this point I actually use the app, only to realize that it has no feature like what I found in the advertisement. The features it does have are laughably bad compared to other habit tracking apps. I decide to immediately cancel the subscription so I go into Settings -> AppleID -> Subscriptions and....it's not listed there. So I go back into the app and dig and dig and dig, and eventually I find a link for "Manage Account" or something of the sort (I didn't take a screen shot). Nowhere does it actually say that I'm a paying subscriber or for how much. Anyways, I click it and get the following:

Not only did they allow me to subscribe in-app, using a mechanism that as far as I can tell, avoids not only Apple's standard subscription mechanism but also avoids (again, as far as I can tell) the standard In App payments mechanism, but they also DO NOT ALLOW ME TO CANCEL in app. Making matters worse, they don't provide any info or a link to where "Fabulous on the web" even is.

At this point I'm wondering to myself....maybe I don't even have a subscription? Maybe it's effectively just a $1 donation and I don't need to worry about it. But I break out my laptop anyways, Google for "fabulous app", login, and sure enough:

At this point I'm livid. These are, beyond a doubt, dark patterns employed to trick users into accidentally making subscription payments. I go through the cancel process, and surprise surprise, they employ even more dark patterns to try and get you to think you've canceled, when in fact, you have not:

Followed by...

...which was actually followed by multiple other screens before cancellation was finally complete, but at this point you get the picture.

So here's an app which as far as I can tell, disregards both the App Store payment rules and employs dark patterns to trick users into accidental payments. It makes absolutely no sense that this passed AppStore review when being published, let alone that it was picked "Editors Choice"!?!?

At this point I decide to go back into the app and walk through the sign-up process. It was when I got to the following screen that I realized something:

If I clicked on the "Try free for 7 days", then it used the standard App Store subscription mechanism. If, instead, I clicked the "Use Free for 7 Days" button, which is designed such that it's an overlayed button meant to draw the users attention to it, then it proceeded to the "Pay what you want" donation page.

So this brought me to the final few points:

• It reminded me of this Verge article about how Uber used geofencing to try and prevent Apple from detecting their shenanigans. I'd be curious to know if they only selectively show the non-App Store mechanism, thus avoiding App Store review denial.
• The intermediary "Pay what you want" page when using this mechanism acts as a sort of buffer prior to getting to the actual payments page that avoids In-App payments. I can see how if you were a reviewer and you stumbled into this, you might just back out without ever actually seeing the payment mechanism that comes after it.
• After digging around further, I realized that you can actually skip the subscription process entirely. They make it very confusing to do so with multiple screens that attempt to trick/convince you into doing otherwise, but again, this leads me to wonder if everyone experiences that same friction...

In any case, either if the App is intentionally being deceptive or if Apple just simply doesn't care, this completely invalidates Apple's claim that safety is the primary reason for not allowing 3rd party marketplaces on iOS.

I would love for someone to poke holes in what I've described above. I'd rather be wrong than have any of what I've described be acceptable.