[notatrumper]

I suppose I could rationalize my continued use of Apple products and even stock ownership with the TOS argument: people voluntarily decide to use Apple products and accept their ToS, and henceforth they are not living in "free speech land", but in "Apple ToS land".

So it's just Apple kicking an app for violating the ToS. Nothing to see here.

Only the timing seemed rather odd.

And of course if I want to use that rationalization, I also have to accept that I live in "Apple ToS land", which I actually do.

Edit: I wonder if apps will start to have vendor specific moderation. Instead of deleting messages, they could just be flagged with "deleted on iOS" or "deleted in China"? I suppose with the China example, they already do that? Certainly news sites already do that, I get "this content is not available in the EU" a lot.

[TulliusCicero]

I don't understand why "rationalization" is necessary. Of course any app store platform is going to have some minimum standards, it's both right and sensible that they be allowed to have such.

You can disagree with some of Apple's policies (I think their policy on emulators is dumb), but to me the solution would just be to allow other app stores so consumers can choose.