Apple does not permit its iPhone customers to install software unless it is delivered via their App Store. They claim they do so in order to protect their customers from their customers' own bad choices about which apps to install.

3/

But time and again, Apple has shown that they exercise this control over their users to pursue their own ends, blocking:

* A dictionary (because it contained swear words);

* A game that simulated working in an Apple sweatshop;

* An informative app that cataloged civilian casualties of US drone strikes;

* The Tumblr app because some Tumblr blogs contained adult content; and

* Working VPN apps for the entire nation of China.

4/

Apple uses its app store control to extract 30 cents out of every dollar spent by its customers in the apps they use. That's a 30%, economy-wide, worldwide tax on news outlets and podcasts that collects subscriptions through apps, Patreon performers whose subscribers pay by app and games publishers who sell via the app store.

5/

Apple also uses its app store control to block rival browser engines (every browser on iOS is just a reskinned version of Safari). Apple's own browser engine, Webkit, is riddled with longstanding, grave security vulnerabilities, and there is no way to distribute more secure browsers on iOS:

open-web-advocacy.org/blog/app…

6/

Apple's Browser Engine Ban Persists, Even Under the DMA - Open Web Advocacy

^{Open Web Advocacy}

Apple claims that it must be able to override its customers' choices about which software they'd like to run, lest those customers make foolish software choices and compromise their own security. Bruce Schneier calls this "feudal security," in which a digital warlord offers you sanctuary from the internet's roving bandits within the mercenary-studded walls of his impenetrable fortress.

7/

The problem is that when the *warlord* attacks *you*, the fortress becomes a prison, and you are rendered helpless:

pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/bat…

Normally, the safety problems of feudal security are *digital*, but with ICEBlock, they are very, very physical. ICE is kidnapping our neighbors and sending them to offshore and onshore gulags. Of the 1,600 people illegally detained in Alligator Auschwitz, *two thirds* cannot be located. They have disappeared:

democracynow.org/2025/9/25/all…

8/

Where Are the Detainees? Hundreds of “Alligator Alcatraz” Prisoners Disappear from ICE Database

Hundreds of people who were once detained at the troubled immigration jail in the Florida Everglades, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” have disappeared.

^{Democracy Now!}

In removing ICEBlock, Apple has deprived its customers of a vital tool for evading these kidnapping, murdering, masked thugs.

ICE moved from targeting "the worst of the worst" to targeting "people here illegally" to "people who look foreign" to "people who live in cities":

federate.social/@mattblaze/115…

You know who would have been at the top of that list? Steve Jobs, who died 14 years ago today:

macrumors.com/2025/10/05/remem…

9/

Remembering Steve Jobs

Today marks the 14th anniversary of Steve Jobs passing away, at the age of 56. He died just one day after Apple unveiled the iPhone 4S and Siri. ...

^{Joe Rossignol (MacRumors.com)}

Matt Blaze

2025-10-05 20:33:49

We went from "we will deport the worst of the worst" to "we will deport anyone here illegally" to "we will round up anyone who looks wrong" to "people who live in cities are the enemy" essentially overnight.