I am in favour of pornography and free speech. However, I actually support Apple’s stance on this issue. Are we suggesting that businesses do not have the right to develop a hardware and software ecosystem based on specific moral codes, which includes a perfectly reasonable ban on apps that facilitate pornography? This is reasonable because many countries have laws against pornography and have much to say about age-restricted products, services, and information. No reasonable observer would oppose such legislation. It is also reasonable as Apple does not then need to expose its staff to pornography or get into the weeds of what constitutes acceptable or unacceptable forms of hardcore content, especially as legislation is variable and even opaque worldwide. Better then to restrict hardcore content entirely. Apple does not in any case block pornography on the iPhone, as it can be accessed through web browsers. I'm sure millions of Apple devices collectively download terabytes of such material every second worldwide. The issue arises with the scale of the platforms being considered. Entities like the EU are not primarily concerned with Apple’s moral stance or its restrictions on pornographic materials. Instead, they focus on restrictions on apps, marketplaces, and payment methods (e.g. the commercialisation of large platforms) and even then not because of the principle of any such restrictions in themselves but because Apple is deemed a "gatekeeper" with an outsize say in such restrictions. Large platforms but without gatekeeper status are accorded more freedom in respect of setting their own restrictions and their own singular ethos, merely due to size not nature or principle. By liberalising access to gatekeeper platforms such as Apple's, more gateways for pornography and other content outside Apple’s family-friendly policies are introduced, as we see in this article with the launch of Hot Tub. This results in the EU, heavily lobbied by billion-dollar rivals to Apple, enforcing the liberalisation of the Apple ecosystem while effectively limiting Apple’s freedom to establish the ethos for its platform, at least across much of Europe, and it is curious that the EU is, without intending to, also permitting (pornographic) content and services that run counter to a corporation's ethos because the commercial rights of Apple's rivals outweigh considerations of principle or morality, greatly reducing Apple's claims about the family. Some might argue this is decadent on the part of the EU and further proof that nothing is sacred.
