WHY AN APP FREEDOM INDEX ? (WHITE PAPER)
Introduction
The launch of Apple’s first iPhone in 2007 revolutionized the mobile industry by bringing a desktop-like experience to handheld devices. Just a year later, the introduction of the App Store in 2008 reshaped the global economy of mobile applications (apps), allowing developers direct access to consumers through a centralized distribution platform. Google soon followed with the Android OS and the Google Play Store (formerly Android Market), creating a duopoly that continues to dominate app distribution.
After more than 15 years, this duopoly has shaped an ecosystem of over 2.2 million apps on Apple’s App Store and 3.3 million apps on the Google Play Store. In 2023, the global mobile application market was valued at $252.89 billion, and in countries like India, app-related activity may contribute up to 12% of the GDP by 2030. These figures underscore the economic power and societal influence of the major app stores. Yet, the centralization and control wielded by Apple and Google raise pressing questions about the Tech companies’ arbitrary control, abuse of power, censorship, transparency and accountability.
This paper examines the multifaceted challenges within the current app store ecosystem and explains why there is a need for an “App Freedom Index” to shed light on the opaque practices of these two dominant gatekeepers.
Challenges Within the Current
App Store Ecosystem
I. Understanding App Stores and Their Actors
What Are App Stores?
App stores are curated online marketplaces where users discover, purchase, and download software applications, while developers submit and maintain their products. At their core, three main actors—platform owners, developers, and users—form a complex interdependence. Platform owners, such as Apple and Google, wield significant power as gatekeepers. They enforce policies that can lead to censorship or removal of apps, often driven by legal, ethical, or business considerations.
A Global, Yet Fragmented Landscape
While Apple’s App Store and Google Play dominate, hundreds of other app stores exist, tailored to local regulations, censorship requirements, and market needs. In China, for instance, government restrictions prevent access to Google Play, paving the way for local alternatives like Huawei’s AppGallery, Xiaomi’s Mi App Store, and Tencent MyApp. These localized stores operate under strict compliance frameworks, reflecting the increasingly complex and region-specific nature of app distribution.
App Store Ecosystems: Design, Architecture, and Control
The app store ecosystems of Apple and Google serve as the backbone of the global app economy, but their architectures reveal distinct philosophies about control, access, and developer engagement.
Apple’s App Store operates as a highly controlled and curated environment. Developers seeking to distribute their apps must navigate a stringent submission process through the App Store Connect platform. This involves providing app binaries, metadata, and compliance details. Apple’s guidelines are notably strict, including prohibitions on accessing private APIs that are reserved for Apple’s own applications. This policy ensures a level of consistency and security but limits third-party developers’ ability to innovate using the same tools available to Apple.
Apple’s review process is notoriously rigorous, emphasizing quality, security, and compliance. This strict curation allows Apple to heavily influence which apps are featured or promoted, further consolidating its role as a gatekeeper. However, this level of control comes at a cost: developers often face rejection or delays without transparent explanations, fueling frustrations over arbitrary enforcement.
Apple also enforces a “walled garden” approach by prohibiting sideloading, or the installation of apps from sources outside the App Store. While this policy ostensibly enhances security, it leaves users with no alternative avenues to access apps that may be unavailable on the store due to policy conflicts or censorship.
In contrast, Google’s Play Store offers a comparatively open system. Developers submit their apps through the Google Play Console, where they provide binaries, app descriptions, and permission details. While Google’s review process is less restrictive than Apple’s, it still involves scrutiny for security and compliance with the store’s policies.
Google allows sideloading, giving Android users the flexibility to install apps from third-party sources. However, this flexibility is tempered by additional security warnings and protections, aiming to help users assess the risks of installing apps from unofficial channels.
Despite their differences, both Apple and Google hold immense power in shaping the mobile app ecosystem. Their policies dictate which apps are available to users, how they are discovered, and how developers can monetize their products. These platforms are not just marketplaces but powerful arbiters of innovation, security, and access in the digital world. This dual role as enablers and gatekeepers underscores their significant influence over the global app landscape.
II. Regional Variations, Geo-Restrictions, and Censorship
Regulatory Compliance Across the World
App stores face a patchwork of regulations worldwide. In China, strict government control leads to rigorous approval processes and widespread content censorship. Similarly, India’s Intermediary Guidelines and the Reserve Bank of India’s data storage requirements push global app stores to adapt their operations. Meanwhile, the EU’s regulatory framework, including the GDPR and Digital Services Act, compels app developers and platforms to maintain higher data protection and user privacy standards.
Local Stores and National Frameworks
This regulatory complexity results in the proliferation of local or national variations of the major stores. Both Apple and Google operate multiple country-specific stores, each with different sets of apps and unique compliance measures. With Apple managing around 175 distinct country stores and Google maintaining a similar number, users’ access to apps increasingly depends on their geographic location and the associated political and legal environment.
III. Arbitrary Control, Abuse of Power, and Undermining Freedom of Information
The dominant role of Apple and Google as gatekeepers of the mobile app ecosystem allows them to exercise significant control over app availability. This power has been used to enforce censorship, sometimes proactively and other times in direct collaboration with authoritarian regimes. These actions have far-reaching consequences, not only for freedom of expression but also for access to information and digital privacy.
Proactive Censorship: Corporate Decisions to Restrict Access
Apple and Google have a history of unilaterally removing apps under the guise of policy enforcement or public safety, often in response to controversial or politically sensitive topics:
- COVID-19-Related Removals (2020): During the pandemic, apps providing alternative public health data or commentary were rejected or removed by Apple under the guise of enforcing misinformation policies.
- Boycott Apps (2023, 2024): Several apps encouraging users to boycott companies based on their political or ethical stances were removed from Google’s Play Store following the IsraelHamas conflict. These actions curtailed tools that could have empowered users to make informed choices aligned with their beliefs.
Collaboration with Authoritarian Regimes
Tech companies have also complied with government censorship demands, often under the pretext of adhering to “local laws”. Aligning their practices with the demands of authoritarian governments, they enforce censorship on a large scale:
A Broader Impact on Fundamental Rights
These practices go beyond censorship of speech—they undermine users’ ability to access critical information. From VPN removals that block tools for bypassing censorship to the suppression of independent media and protest-supporting apps, the consequences ripple across societies. By limiting access to these tools, Apple and Google fragment the digital world, allowing authoritarian regimes to shape online spaces according to their political agendas.
IV. Lack of Transparency and Accountability
The opaque policies and decision-making processes of Apple and Google enable their censorship practices to persist without meaningful scrutiny. The lack of clear communication with developers, insufficient public reporting, and limited avenues for appeal reinforce their ability to operate without accountability.
Incomplete Transparency Reports
Both companies publish annual transparency reports, but these reports provide limited insights into their actions. For example, Apple’s 2023 Transparency Report disclosed the removal of 1,285 apps in China due to government requests but offered no details on the apps removed or the reasons behind these actions. Developers often receive no advance notice, vague explanations, and no opportunity to appeal app removals, leaving them unable to challenge decisions or gain clarity about compliance.
While GreatFire’s latest report identified nearly 60 VPN removals from Apple’s Russia App Store, it remains unclear whether these actions will even be acknowledged in Apple’s next transparency report. Historically, such actions have been underreported or omitted entirely, undermining the credibility of these reports as tools for accountability.
Barriers for Developers and Researchers
Developers frequently receive cryptic notifications referencing general policy violations when their apps are removed. These notifications lack specificity, offering no explanation of how the app violated policies or whether the removal was due to government requests. Without proper channels for appeal, developers are left powerless.
Researchers attempting to track censorship trends face significant challenges due to this lack of transparency. Tools like AppleCensorship.com’s App Store Monitor (ASM) and GoogleCensorship.org’s Play Store Monitor (PSM) provide some visibility into app availability, but the absence of official reporting mechanisms leaves many questions unanswered. The silence around specific cases makes it difficult to assess whether removals result from government pressure, platform policies, or internal decisions.
Reinforcing a Lack of Accountability
The current system allows Apple and Google to act with little oversight. By avoiding detailed reporting, failing to notify developers, and offering no appeals process, they reinforce their ability to enforce decisions without accountability. This opacity shields their actions from scrutiny, enabling both companies and the governments they work with to evade responsibility for restricting access to information.
Establishing the Need for the App Freedom Index
V. Addressing the Gaps: Why We Need an App Freedom Index
The current app store landscape is characterized by opacity, arbitrary removals, and regional inconsistencies that largely go unaddressed. Tech companies like Apple and Google operate as opaque gatekeepers, leaving researchers, developers, and civil society with limited tools to investigate app availability and censorship trends across platforms and regions.
Recognizing these challenges, GreatFire launched its App Censorship Project, starting with AppleCensorship.com, which monitors app availability and restrictions on the App Store. In 2023, the organization expanded its work with the development of the Play Store Monitor and released GoogleCensorship.org in 2024 to analyze app availability in the Google ecosystem. These efforts laid the groundwork for a comprehensive analysis of app ecosystems, but they remain limited by platform-specific approaches.
To address this limitation, the App Freedom Index (AFI) emerges as a logical next step. The Index would build on existing tools and introduce a cross-platform framework for investigating app censorship globally. By integrating both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, the AFI would systematically analyze app availability across platforms and regions, allowing researchers to examine trends over time, identify disparities, and better understand the intersection of corporate policy, government intervention, and user rights.
The AFI represents not just a research tool but a foundation for advocacy, transparency, and accountability. By bringing together data that is currently fragmented and incomplete, the Index will offer insights that are essential for protecting freedom of information and expression in today’s mobile ecosystems.
VI. Tools for Advocacy, Transparency, and Accountability
A Tool to Study App Censorship from New Angles
The AFI would enable a more holistic approach to understanding app censorship. While tools like the App Store Monitor (ASM) and Play Store Monitor (PSM) focus on tracking app availability at a given moment, the Index would add new dimensions by systematically studying how apps are restricted over time. It would investigate both “offer” dynamics (e.g., whether apps are available on one or both platforms and any differences in versions) and “restriction” dynamics (e.g., whether apps available in one region are accessible globally or limited by local regulations).
To provide this comprehensive view, the Index would rely on both existing data sources (e.g., ASM, PSM, and Apple’s transparency reports) and new methodologies, such as interviews with affected developers, insights from regional users, and analysis of regulatory frameworks. These approaches would reveal not only how apps are made available or restricted but also the broader patterns of corporate and government behavior driving these trends. Unlike current monitoring efforts, which are sporadic and fragmented, the AFI would deliver regular, systematic updates, including annual reports that track censorship trends over time.
A Tool to Illuminate Hidden Patterns of Censorship
By consolidating and interpreting data from multiple platforms, the AFI would provide valuable insights into the hidden mechanisms of censorship. It would make efficient use of tagging systems under development at AppleCensorship.com and GoogleCensorship.org to identify apps critical for civil society, such as VPNs, human rights tools, or independent media.
The Index would help identify regions, platforms, and app categories most vulnerable to restrictions. For example, it could reveal how authoritarian regimes disproportionately target apps used by activists, journalists, or marginalized communities. By analyzing these patterns, the AFI would enable researchers, developers, and civil society groups to focus their efforts where they are most needed, fostering better advocacy and intervention strategies.
A Tool for Transparency and Accountability
A critical goal of the AFI is to address the lack of transparency in app store operations. The Index would provide a comprehensive and accessible resource for understanding how apps are censored, restricted, or promoted. Unlike current transparency reports from Apple and Google, which offer limited information, the AFI would create a clearer picture of app availability, removals, and government takedown requests across regions.
This transparency would hold both tech companies and governments accountable. Platforms would no longer be able to quietly remove apps or cite vague “local laws” without facing public scrutiny. Governments pushing for censorship would be pressured to explain their demands, especially when these actions undermine freedom of information and expression. By aggregating and analyzing previously inaccessible data, the AFI would empower stakeholders to engage in informed debates about regulatory frameworks, policy reforms, and legal challenges.
A Catalyst for Advocacy and Framework for Change
The AFI would not only serve as a tool for research but also as an engine for advocacy. By revealing patterns of suppression—who is targeted, where, and why—the Index would enable civil society organizations, activists, and policymakers to campaign more effectively for fundamental rights. It would help amplify public debate and inform legislative efforts to regulate how tech companies operate.
Comparable to other global freedom indexes, such as those published by Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders, the AFI would shine a spotlight on regions, platforms, and categories of apps where censorship is most pervasive. Its comparative, holistic approach would highlight inconsistencies in how platforms operate and foster meaningful dialogue between governments, platforms, and civil society.
By equipping stakeholders with actionable data, the Index would mobilize campaigns and encourage governments and platforms to adopt policies that respect freedom of information and expression. Over time, the AFI’s insights could help create global standards for transparency and accountability in the digital ecosystem.
VII. Toward a More Equitable Digital Ecosystem
In a world where mobile apps underpin communication, commerce, and civic engagement, ensuring unrestricted access to tools and information is essential. Yet, the current app store ecosystem remains dominated by opaque power structures and inconsistent policies that enable censorship and undermine user rights.
The App Freedom Index represents a vital step toward addressing these challenges. By consolidating fragmented data, analyzing hidden trends, and fostering transparency, the Index offers a powerful framework for holding tech platforms and governments accountable. It empowers researchers to identify censorship patterns, advocates to campaign for policy reforms, and lawmakers to enact regulations that protect fundamental rights.
The AFI’s multi-dimensional approach—spanning research, transparency, and advocacy—will not only illuminate current problems but also provide a roadmap for change. It challenges tech platforms to operate with greater accountability, compels governments to justify their interventions, and equips civil society to push for an open and equitable digital environment.
As a comprehensive and systematic tool, the App Freedom Index will be instrumental in dismantling barriers to information and expression. By shining a light on the dark corners of app store operations, it ensures that the digital landscape becomes a space where freedom, fairness, and innovation thrive for all users.