I’m one person. I run a small software company, and I made a Mac app that does one small, useful thing: it shows you what your link will look like on Slack, LinkedIn, iMessage, Discord and twenty other places before you post it. It works on localhost, where no crawler can reach, because that is where the bugs are. It is free. There is no account, no subscription, and nothing to buy.

I built it because I kept posting links with the wrong picture and the wrong title, and so did everyone I knew. Broken previews are a small ugliness the whole internet shares. A tool that fixes them makes the web a little better for people who will never hear of it. That is the whole ambition.

The link

At the bottom of the app’s welcome screen I put one link: Learn more at opengraphplus.com. My website. The company that made the app you were using.

A certain fruit company in Cupertino rejected the app for it. Their concern was that my website has a Pricing page. I explained that the app is free, that the Pricing page sells web hosting to people who are not the app’s users, and that nothing on it changes a single pixel of the app. They rejected it again, this time with a screenshot of the link, in case I had forgotten where I put it.

Two rounds of review. Two people, each waiting on the other. Both spent looking for in-app purchases in an app with nothing for sale. They were looking for a door in a wall.

What I did about it

I took the link out. The welcome screen of the app you can download today has no link on it at all.

Instead, if you click the OpenGraph+ logo on that screen, a window opens. It tells this story, a little more sharply than I am telling it here, with the court record attached. It has two buttons: Share as Text and Share as Image. You do not need my permission to use them.

The record

I’ll keep this part plain.

On September 10, 2021, a federal court permanently enjoined the fruit company from prohibiting developers from including in their apps “buttons, external links, or other calls to action” that point users elsewhere. It responded with a 27 percent commission on anything those links sold, and a warning screen designed to scare people out of clicking them.

On April 30, 2025, the same court found that it had willfully violated the order, that a senior executive had given false testimony about it, and referred the matter to the United States Attorney for criminal contempt. On December 11, 2025, the Ninth Circuit affirmed. In June 2026 the Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal and declined to pause the order while it does.

The fruit company’s own review guidelines now say that no entitlement is required to include such links in United States storefront apps. My app is on the United States storefront.

The documents, from the courts’ own servers:

• Permanent Injunction, Epic Games v. Apple, N.D. Cal. No. 4:20-cv-05640, Dkt. 813 (Sept. 10, 2021)
• Order Granting Motion to Enforce Injunction; Referral re Criminal Contempt, Dkt. 1508 (Apr. 30, 2025)
• Ninth Circuit opinion affirming contempt, No. 25-2935 (Dec. 11, 2025)
• Supreme Court docket, Apple Inc. v. Epic Games, Inc., No. 25-1311 (cert. granted June 30, 2026)
• App Review Guidelines § 3.1.3(a)

That case was fought over the iPhone. Mine is a Mac app. The injunction says “developers” and “their apps” and does not say which ones. I expect a four-trillion-dollar company to argue the difference. I expect everyone else to see the point.

The doorkeeper

“No one else could gain admittance here, because this entrance was meant only for you. I am going to shut it now.”

Kafka wrote a short parable called Before the Law. A man from the country comes to a door and asks to be let in. The doorkeeper says not now. The man waits. He waits for years. He gives the doorkeeper everything he owns, and the doorkeeper takes it, saying only that he accepts it so the man will not think he has left anything untried. The man grows old at the door. At the end he asks why, in all these years, no one else has come seeking admittance. The doorkeeper tells him: this door was meant only for you. I am going to shut it now.

I have read that story many times and always thought it was about God, or bureaucracy, or death. This year I found out it is about a submission queue.

The doorkeeper is not the villain. Kafka is clear about that. He is a functionary with a job, and the job is the door. The reviewer who rejected my app twice was doing the job. I said so in the window, and I mean it. If you are that reviewer and you are reading this: I hope your afternoon gets better.

The greengrocer

“I, the greengrocer XY, live here and I know what I must do. I behave in the manner expected of me. I can be depended upon and am beyond reproach. I am obedient and therefore I have the right to be left in peace.”

Václav Havel, writing under a government that did not like him, described a greengrocer who puts a sign in his shop window that says Workers of the world, unite! The greengrocer does not believe it. Nobody who walks past believes it. He puts it up because that is what one does, and because not putting it up would be noticed. The sign’s real message, Havel said, is: I am obedient, and I have the right to be left in peace.

Every developer who has quietly deleted a link or reworded a button to get through review has put up that sign. I put one up too. This post is me taking it down. Not with a brick. With a window anyone can read.

The stone

“And he took his staff in his hand, and chose him five smooth stones out of the brook, and put them in a shepherd’s bag which he had, even in a scrip; and his sling was in his hand.”

Everyone remembers that David beat Goliath. Fewer remember how little he brought. He turned down the armor. He walked down to the stream and picked up five smooth stones, and he used one.

I am not comparing myself to David. I am a person with a small company and a debugging tool. But the story was never about strength. It is about picking the right size of thing. A link is a small thing. A free app that makes the web nicer is a small thing. A window that tells the truth, with footnotes, is a small thing. So was the stone.

What happens next

If the fruit company removes the app, it will have removed a free tool for making the internet look better, over a window that contains true statements and court documents. That would be a clear thing for everyone to look at, and I would rather have a clear thing than an app.

If it approves the app, then the most honest thing it publishes this year will ship under its own seal.

Either way, the web will still be here. It always is. It is the one platform that never asked me to remove a link to my own website.

If you want to help

Install the app. Click the logo. Share what you find, as text or as an image, the way you would share anything else you thought people should read. Tell one person who ships software for a living.

Nobody is asking you to boycott anything or to be angry. I am asking you to look, and to let other people look. That is all a link ever did.