VOPE · Hosted Apps
Hosted Apps lets a VOPE group member share a small web page inside a chat. This page explains, plainly, what that feature actually is, the protections built into it, and how those protections align with Apple's and Google's platform policies.
A Hosted App is a single web page — HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, nothing else — shared by a group member and rendered inside a locked-down viewer on every other member's phone. It is not a native mobile app. It has no listing of its own on the App Store or Google Play, is never installed as a separate app, and cannot be distributed or discovered outside the one VOPE chat it was shared in.
This falls under Apple's App Store Review Guideline 4.7 ("Mini Apps, Mini Games, Streaming Games, Chatbots, Plug-ins, and Game Emulators") — Apple's own provision for exactly this pattern, HTML5/JavaScript content hosted inside another app — and under Google Play's Device and Network Abuse and User Generated Content policies, both of which explicitly permit interpreted content (JavaScript in a web view) distinct from native executable code.
A Hosted App cannot make a network request of any kind — no API calls, no analytics, no ads, nothing phoning home. Enforced by a Content-Security-Policy the page cannot see or override.
No camera, microphone, location, contacts, or file system. There is no permission a Hosted App can request — the capability simply isn't wired to anything.
A Hosted App cannot read your messages, display name, photo, or any other app's data — only a small storage area scoped to that one app (see the developer spec for exactly what that storage can hold).
Since a Hosted App cannot reach the network at all, there is no path from inside one to any payment processor, checkout flow, or purchase of any kind.
Adult or sexual content is prohibited outright in every Hosted App, with no exception — this is separate from, and stricter than, the mature-content flag below, which covers only otherwise-lawful mature themes like violence.
The moment a Hosted App is reported, it's disabled for every group member — including its owner — before anyone at VOPE looks at it. It stays disabled unless the owner agrees to a full review and VOPE decides to restore it.
VOPE can permanently remove any Hosted App, revoke a specific person's ability to share apps at all, or disable their account entirely — at VOPE's sole discretion, and any combination of the three.
Whoever shares a Hosted App can flag it as containing lawful mature content. A flagged app is hidden from anyone who hasn't confirmed they're 18 or older, checked separately from VOPE's general account settings.
Hosting a Hosted App is a feature VOPE offers at its own discretion, not a guaranteed right — see the Terms of Service, section 10, for the complete policy this page summarizes.
| Requirement | How VOPE satisfies it |
|---|---|
| No native platform API exposure without permission | Structural — the sandbox exposes nothing beyond the scoped data store described in the developer spec. |
| No data or privacy permission sharing without per-instance consent | Structural — no identity, contact, or profile data is ever exposed to a Hosted App, so there is nothing to consent to. |
| In-app reporting and blocking for user-generated content | Every Hosted App can be reported from its own settings. A report disables it immediately, automatically — no operator action required to trigger that — and it stays disabled unless its owner agrees to a review and VOPE decides to restore it. |
| An index of available software, reachable by direct link | Every Hosted App a person can access appears in VOPE's Apps tab, and each one has its own direct link that opens straight to it. |
| Age-appropriate access controls | Mature-flagged apps are hidden from anyone who hasn't confirmed they're 18 or older — a check specific to Hosted Apps, independent of the rest of VOPE. |
Building a Hosted App for VOPE (by hand, or with an AI coding assistant)? Every rule above is stated as a concrete constraint, with a working example and a machine-readable schema, on the developer & AI-agent specification page. That page is written to be handed directly to an AI coding tool as context.