Apple rejects net neutrality testing app, says it offers “no benefits to users”

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An iPhone application that attempts to detect whether ISPs are throttling online services was rejected by Apple when its developer tried to get it into the company's App Store.

David Choffnes, a Northeastern University professor who researches distributed systems and networking, built an app called "Wehe" that tests the speeds of YouTube, Amazon, NBCSports, Netflix, Skype, Spotify, and Vimeo. Abnormally low speed results for one or more of those services might, in theory, provide evidence that your mobile carrier is throttling a service.

But as Motherboard reported today, Apple refused to let the app into the iPhone App Store, telling him that "your app has no direct benefits to the user." Motherboard was able to test a beta version of the app using Apple's TestFlight platform and provided this screenshot of the application in action:

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