Apple removed 190 apps from its Russian App Store at the request of Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor between 2022 and 2024, the company’s own annual transparency reports for those three years show.
Though the number of apps removed from the Russian App Store has risen every year, that number rose hugely in 2024, when the Russian authorities began cracking down far more aggressively on online freedoms than it previously had done.
After removing just seven apps in 2022, and 12 in 2023, Apple deleted 171 apps in 2024, meaning that Russia ranked second only to China by the number of apps removed at the request of the authorities.
In the vast majority of cases — 182 out of 190 — Roskomnadzor invoked the same piece of Russian legislation setting out the grounds for blocking websites in its requests to the US tech giant. These range from the dissemination of materials by “undesirable organisations” to incitement to terrorism. A further seven apps were removed for breaching Russian financial laws, specifically to combat illegal securities trading, online fraudsters and the theft of personal data.
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As an addition, it is noteworthy that Apple is (in-)famous to bow to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party. For example, one report reads, Apple’s censorship in China is just the tip of the iceberg after the Chinese government ordered Apple to remove several widely used messaging apps—WhatsApp, Threads, Signal, and Telegram—from its app store.
According to reports from 2020, Apple purges nearly 30,000 apps from Chinese App Store.
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Russia would love an excuse to boot Apple out, and thus completely control the phone ecosystem. For every popular app that gets banned, thousands still “slip through.”
Hence I don’t hate on them for complying.
Selfish? Yes. But when you consider what would replace Apple, their presence is more damaging to Putin’s regime than pulling out would be.
there is 0 reason to ban apple
they have a shit locked platform each makes using their devices against their users way easier, as you just saw they can just tell apple to block this or that and they will comply, and yes google would do the same, but in iOS it is way harder and inconvinent and less pratical to install things from outside what apple (thus russia) wants you to, this is why there is 0 reason to ban apple, they produce the right tools to oppress and control the masses, they are too convinient for an autocratic regime not to use to wield power over their citizens
iOS still smuggles in “western” influence and culture through the App Store, though. You can see it in broadcasts from the younger generation.
Shutting out Apple (and Google) could get Russia’s population in a situation somewhere between North Korea and China, where the whole premise of a mobile OS is careful state-sanctioned control, as opposed to managed foreign influence that’s too inconvenient to yank. A whitelist, instead of a blacklist.