Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they do have a point though. If Apple's primary concern was security, they would be approaching this from a fundamentally different perspective; their current solution is a pretty dubious stopgap that bridges "human consent" and "your app". A fundamentally secure approach would ultimately let the user audit and manually control their API interfaces to prevent abuse, instead of just hoping Apple has your best…
Many of Apple’s “security” policies are fundamentally editorial rather than technical restrictions. How do you propose that such editorial policies be enforced? For example: an app which targets children and asks them to supply personal information. Similarly, Apple’s new, much-lauded anti-tracking policy does have a technical component to it, but it would be easy enough for motivated developers to get around it. All…
Yes, and they can also nudge us to pro-Apple business model behaviours such as direct payment instead of ad funding or force us to mislead consumers into paying higher prices than are available elsewhere.
They can also enforce random cultural biases such as "no porn" and threaten our human and civil rights as a side-effect of banning side-loading. In other cases they help to protect our civil rights.
So that's the dilemma. Apple can make arbitrary rules for arbitrary reasons, sometimes helping us, sometimes hurting us. Taking away Apple's right to make those arbitrary rules would allow other companies to impose their own rules without giving users a real choice.
One way or another, users and small developers are left with very little choice and very little freedom.