I get that opinion, but it's the same utopian view that if Apple doesn't ban the app, it will somehow allow us to defy the government.
This is delusional - the government can easily attack the server, and arrest the people who operate it, using any obscure law from 1790 that does the job. They did it to Silk Road, they did it to The Pirate Bay, they can do it to ICEBlock. Removing it from Apple is just the asking nicely method that doesn't require putting the creator behind bars on a technicality.
The power dynamics for technical solutions are "you can resist the government insofar as the government allows," here and everywhere, and always will be. The solution is not better technical solutions, better band-aids on a severed limb, but better government.
> If Apple didn't have such a closed walled-gardrn, they'd be unable to do it even if they wanted to; even if an authotarian regime demanded it.
If we truly lived under an authoritarian regime, 90% of phones could be open source, and they would still have no qualms about kicking you off the cellular network until you purchased an approved device. No technological solution can truly resist a determined authoritarian regime. Control the infrastructure, control the border letting hardware in, control the manufacturing processes, and who cares about the devices subject to it?