Don't think many people here are reading the source so I have pasted this long excerpt from page 364 as a sample.
"During the Subcommittee's sixth hearing, Representatives Val Demings (D-FL) and Lucy McBath (D-GA) asked questions regarding Apple's conduct in 2018 and 2019 removing parental control apps from the App Store. In 2018, Apple announced its Screen Time app, a new feature bundled with iOS 12 that helped iOS users limit the time they and their children spent on the iPhone. Thereafter, Apple began to purge many of the leading rival parental control apps from the App Store. Apple explained the apps were removed because they used a technology called Mobile Device Management (MDM). The MDM technology allowed parents to remotely take over their children's phones and block content. Apple noted that MDM could allow the app developer to access sensitive content on the device.
According to The New York Times, the parental control apps using MDM had been offered in the App Store for years, and hundreds of updates to those apps had been approved by Apple. 2317 As a result, many apps were forced to shut down, 2318 although some were given a reprieve. 2319 Two parental control apps filed a complaint with the European Commission, alleging Apple's App Store policies were anticompetitive. The complaint alleged that as Apple purged competitors it introduced Screen Time, pre-installed Screen Time on iOS 12 and activated it by default, and gave Screen Time access to iOS functionalities it denied to competing third-party apps.2320
Subcommittee staff reviewed emails from parents who contacted Apple to complain about the removal of one of the purged parental control apps. 2321 They said that Screen Time was a comparably worse option for consumers—and described it as "more complicated" and "less restrictive" than competitors. 2322 In emails to the company reviewed by Subcommittee staff, parents complained about Apple's monopoly power over app distribution on iOS and self-interest in promoting Screen Time motivated Apple's actions. 2323 In response, Apple Senior Vice President Worldwide Marketing, Phil Schiller explained that Screen Time was "designed to help parents manage their children's access to technology." 2324 He added that Apple would "work with developers to offer many great apps on the App Store for these uses, using technologies that are safe and private for us and our children."2325
Internally, Apple's Vice President of Marketing Communications, Tor Myhren concurred, responding "[t]his is quite incriminating. Is it true?" to an email with a link to The New York Times' reporting. 2326 Apple's communications team asked CEO Tim Cook to approve a "narrative" in that Apple's clear-out of Screen Time's rivals was "not about competition, this is about protecting kids privacy."2327
Developers of the purged apps also contacted Apple, outraged that they had been removed from the App Store while other apps that used MDM remained. 2328 One developer explained it had invested more than $200,000 building its parental control app, then another $30,000 to fix the problem Apple identified, only to be told that Apple would no longer support parental control apps in the App Store.2329
Although Apple claimed its conduct was motivated to protect privacy and not intended to clear out competitors to Screen Time, Apple reinstated many of the apps the same day that it was reported the Department of Justice was investigating Apple for potential antitrust violations. 2330 Apple's solution to address privacy concerns was to ask the apps to promise not to sell or disclose user data to third parties, which could have been achieved through less restrictive means and without removing those apps from the App Store.2331
Developers of parental control apps asked Apple to "release a public API granting developers access to the same functionalities that Apple's native 'Screen Time' uses." 2332 Eventually, Apple did grant some apps access to APIs, 2333 but only after rival app developers were accused of being a risk to children's privacy, removed from the App Store, forced to incur significant costs, only for Apple to change its mind. 2334 As one developer noted, Apple's new MDM privacy policies resulted in "really nothing much changing from the developer side as far as the technology goes."2335
Here, Apple's monopoly power over app distribution enabled it to exclude rivals to the benefit of Screen Time. Apple could have achieved its claimed objective—protecting user privacy—through less restrictive means, which it ultimately did only after significant outcry from the public and a prolonged period of harm to rivals. 2336 Apple's conduct here is a clear example of Apple's use of privacy as a sword to exclude rivals and a shield to insulate itself from charges of anticompetitive conduct.
Subcommittee staff learned that Apple has engaged in conduct to exclude rivals to benefit Apple's services in other instances. For example, Mr. Shoemaker explained that Apple's senior executives would find pretextual reasons to remove apps from the App Store, particularly when those apps competed with Apple services.2337
