Key Fairness-by-Design Principles |
Coalition for App Fairness1 |
| Respect People’s Privacy Rights with enhanced transparency |
Every developer should always have access to app stores as long as its app meets fair, objective and nondiscriminatory standards for security, privacy, quality, content, and digital safety. |
| Enable Interoperability to support collaboration & support open markets |
No developer should be required to use an app store exclusively, or to use ancillary services of the app store owner, including payment systems, or to accept other supplementary obligations in order to have access to the app store. No app store owner should prohibit third parties from offering competing app stores on the app store owner’s platform, or discourage developers or consumers from using them. |
| Support Business Viability reliant on responsible addressable marketing |
No developer should be blocked from the platform or discriminated against based on a developer’s business model, how it delivers content and services, or whether it competes in any way with the app store owner. |
| Fair Access free from self-preferencing by dominant platforms |
No app store owner or its platform should engage in self-preferencing its own apps or services, or interfere with users’ choice of preferences or defaults. No developer should be required to pay unfair, unreasonable or discriminatory fees or revenue shares, nor be required to sell within its app anything it doesn’t wish to sell, as a condition to gain access to the app store. |
| Representative Governance to ensure impact to all stakeholder’s interests are appropriately considered |
All app stores will be transparent about their rules and policies and opportunities for promotion and marketing, apply these consistently and objectively, provide notice of changes, and make available a quick, simple and fair process to resolve disputes. |
| Open Standards available to all at the same time |
Every developer should have timely access to the same interoperability interfaces and technical information as the app store owner makes available to its own developers. |
| Prohibit Repurposing by supply chains or gatekeeper organizations |
A developer’s data should not be used to compete with the developer. |
| Unimpeded communication between organizations and its customers |
Every developer should always have the right to communicate directly with its users through its app for legitimate business purposes. |