My guess would be that they threatened to pull the app from their store; I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of both them and Google doing that with other things as well. People often point out that first amendment rights only apply to the government and corporations can do as they wish, but the problem is that corporations have more or less supplanted the government at this point. They own the mail / shipping systems, the electronic communications systems, the food and housing, and often even the roads. Rich people figured out that they don’t have to deal with any of those pesky governmental restrictions on power if they just call it capitalism instead. Hell, they can even point the finger right back and say they’re the ones being infringed upon!
As a bonus, we also have the US government (and I’m sure other countries too) making secret, “unofficial requests” to private corporations such as Twitter and Facebook to extralegally censor speech, as FOIA requests eventually revealed.
My guess would be that they threatened to pull the app from their store; I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of both them and Google doing that with other things as well. People often point out that first amendment rights only apply to the government and corporations can do as they wish, but the problem is that corporations have more or less supplanted the government at this point. They own the mail / shipping systems, the electronic communications systems, the food and housing, and often even the roads. Rich people figured out that they don’t have to deal with any of those pesky governmental restrictions on power if they just call it capitalism instead. Hell, they can even point the finger right back and say they’re the ones being infringed upon!
As a bonus, we also have the US government (and I’m sure other countries too) making secret, “unofficial requests” to private corporations such as Twitter and Facebook to extralegally censor speech, as FOIA requests eventually revealed.