Apple will tell you more about apps removed from the App Store in the future. Until now, the company only lists numbers per country, but now it also includes reasons for removal and removals by category.
Apple is not going to tell per app why it was removed, reports Ars Technica . The information comes in its Transparency Report, which is publicly available online . That report now only states per country how many apps a government has required to remove and in how many cases Apple has honored this. The only difference now is that it is ordered by the government or because of a violation of the platform’s rules.
Apple is pressuring the change from activist shareholders, who want to check whether Apple is infringing on civil liberties by removing apps in certain countries. That is why in the future the report will include how many apps have been removed from the App Store for what reason. The report will not address individual apps in the future, Ars Technica claims. The activist shareholders would have liked that, but Apple did not go along with it.
The shareholders had made the call because they fear that the secrecy obscures that Apple is removing apps in countries such as Russia and China in order to help limit freedom of speech in those countries. The step should clarify whether that is indeed the case. China asked Apple to remove 89 apps in the first half of 2021, and Apple has granted all those requests. In the years before, the Chinese government already asked to remove hundreds of apps. The Netherlands and Belgium did not ask for apps to be removed during that period.
