Apple’s Russia’s App Store

Overview

September 2021 Measurements

by AppleCensorship’s App Store Monitor (ASM)

App Store Monitor (ASM)

Apps Unavailability Per Category - Russia’s App Store - September 2021

Total Number of Unavailable Apps: 464 | Ratio of Unavailability: 11,97%

Unavailable apps Russia’s App Store (September 2021). Source: “Censored on the App Store” Report (pages 14 – 15) / Nov 1, 2022 Press release

From 3,877 tested Apps, 464 Apps were detected as unavailable.

• 99 App Stores out of 155 had over 3000 apps tested.
• Russia was ranked 19th out of 155 App Stores in terms of unavailability of apps.
• Only 10 App Stores were found to have from 400 to over 500 unavailable apps (405 to 550).

In November 2021, AppleCensorship published its first overview report on the App Store. Studying the unavailability of apps in the 155 App Stores operated by Apple and based on the data collected by the App Store Monitor (ASM), we estimated no less than 29 million cases of app unavailability in Apple’s App Stores.

Although there are discrepancies in availability of apps between App Stores - a fact which quashes the very idea of a unique App Store - we found that the average percentage of app unavailability (the ratio between the number of apps tested in a given App Store to the proportion of apps which were found to be unavailable in that App Store) among all 155 App Stores, was around 10% (10.46%).

Russia’s App Store already ranked high in terms of apps’ unavailability. With 464 apps being found unavailable out of the 3877 apps that had been tested, and a ratio of apps’ unavailability of almost 12% (11.97%), Russia’s App Store ranked at the 19th position out of 155 App Stores.

When it came to specific categories, Russia’s App Store was ranked 7th for unavailable “Health and Fitness” apps (10), 12th for “Social Networking” apps (30) , and 10th for unavailable “Lifestyle” apps (32), three categories which include many LGBTQ+ related apps.

Russia’s App Store ranked 3rd for Productivity (18), and 12th for Utilities (34), two categories which regroup the majority of VPN apps.

All results are available here

List of unavailable apps in Russia’s App Store detected by the ASM at the time

App Takedown Requests

On April 21, 2022, AppleCensorship published a report, “Taken Down: A Look into Apple’s Transparency Reports”, exposing how Apple carefully engineered its Transparency Reports to conceal as much information as possible on app removals from the 175 App Stores it operates worldwide.

The report, which examines the four Transparency Reports covering “Worldwide Government App Store Takedown Requests” from January 2019 until December 2020, established that Russia was, along with China and India, one of the few countries which continually requested that Apple remove apps over the 2 years period, appearing in every semiannual report compiled by Apple.

According to Apple, Russian authorities requested the removal of 42 apps over two years. Apple complied in 95.24% of the requests, removing 40 apps, 19 of which were removed from all 175 App Stores and not just Russia’s App Store.

APP STORE TAKEDOWN REQUESTS & REMOVALS – COUNTRY BREAKDOWN (2019 - 2020)

Compliance with Russia’s requests for removal, although already high in 2019, increased to the maximum, despite the regime’s notoriety for censoring information and cracking down on digital freedoms.

By initiating 19 “Platform Policy Violations Takedown Requests (PPVTR), - i.e. removals - Russia triggered around 3,000 “collateral removals” across all App Stores. Such figures expose the real dynamics behind App Takedown Requests and reveal that authoritarian countries such as Russia impact the App Store’s ecosystem the most. The idea that Russia’s Internet policies only affect its own citizens is demonstrated to be false. While countries like India, (which triggered more removals than Russia in 2019 - 2020) Norway, or Austria also have their fair share of apps removed following takedown requests, their impact on the App Store globally cannot be compared to that of Russia (or China), as they only removed apps in their own country’s App Store. Over that two years period, 19 unknown apps were removed by Apple from 155/175 App Stores at the request of Russia, without any legal justification having been publicly disclosed, and while users worldwide are left with no option but to trust that Apple “knows [the line] when [it] sees it”.

September 2022 Measurements

by AppleCensorship’s App Store Monitor (ASM)

App Store Monitor (ASM)

Apps Unavailability Per Category - Russia’s App Store - September 2022

Total Number of Unavailable Apps: 2,347 | Ratio of Unavailability: 14,87%

From 15,784 tested Apps, 2,347 Apps were detected as unavailable.

• 99 App Stores out of 155 had over 3000 apps tested.
• Russia now ranks 10th out of 160 App Stores in terms of unavailability of app.
• The App Store Monitor conducted a similar amount of tests in Ukraine’s App Store (about 15 000 apps tested), and found 1859 unavailable apps, almost 500 less than in Russia’s App Store.

Today, Russia’s app store ranks 10* out of 160 App Stores in terms of apps’ unavailability, with a ratio of unavailability at 14.87%. The App Store Monitor has found 2347 apps unavailable in Russia’s App Store.

Full list of these apps can be viewed here

Comparison of the 2021 and 2022 Measurements

The percentage of unavailability consists in the ratio of unavailable apps in a given App Store over the total number of apps tested in that App Store.

At the time of AppleCensorship’s September 2021 report, Russia was 19th/20 highest of app unavailability with 11.97%, now it ranks 10th. The App Store Monitor was only recently able to crawl certain App Stores: Marocco, Gabon, Tonga, Rwanda, and DR Congo, all of which currently rank in top positions in terms of unavailability percentage. Therefore, it is expected that Russia’s App Store position in that ranking is in fact higher than it seems. This will be visible when more tests will have been run by the ASM and when the recently monitored Stores see their unavailability percentage decreasing.

Countries with highest percentage of unavailability (September 2021)

Source: Censored on the App Store : First Overview of AppleCensorship Data (September 2021)

Countries with highest percentage of unavailability (October 2022)

Source: AppleCensorship.com (Data exported on Oct 13, 2022)

In terms of categories, the main evolution between 2021 and 2022 is the increase of the number of unavailable apps from three categories: Shopping apps (from 10th to 5th position), Finance apps (from 6th to 4th position) and, to a lesser extent, Business apps (from 11th to 9th position). This is largely explained by the start of the war in Ukraine, and the decision of many companies to remove their own apps and services from Russia and Russia’s App Store. Only 64 apps out the 353 apps that these three categories regroup, were tested unavailable by the App Store Monitor before February 24, 2022, the day on which Russian military troops entered Ukraine. The other 289 apps belonging to these three categories were removed between February 27, 2022 and September 15, 2022.

As in 2021, the unavailability of apps per category in 2022 continues to reflect the distribution of categories in the App Store with a few noticeable differences: While the Entertainment category accounts for a small part of all the apps in the App Store, it ranks 2nd in terms of unavailable apps in Russia’s App Store. On the contrary, while Education apps account for a significant part of all apps, it only ranks 13th in terms of unavailability. No immediate conclusion can be made out this observation and more data on these categories’ unavailability in other App Stores would be required to allow further analysis.

Unavailability in Russia’s App Store VS. Distribution of Categories in iOS App Store

Cases of unavailability by category

As shown before, the evolution of apps unavailability after the invasion of Ukraine, propelled Shopping and Finance categories in the top five unavailable apps categories. Setting aside these two categories - for which we can surmise the probable cause of unavailability (i.e. voluntary removals by the apps’ owners) - we observe that both Social Networking and Productivity categories stand out as including a significant number of unavailable apps (117 Social Networking apps and 84 Productivity apps) while these categories do not account for many apps within the App Store.

Local & Regional Apps

In Apple’s app distribution, an undetermined number of apps are released only in one or very few specific App Stores. The unavailability of these “local” or “regional” apps in almost all App Stores but one (or a few), is notably explained by the relevance of an app in a specific context (e.g. a city map only released in the country of that city), its language (e.g. an app in Arabic language only released in countries where Arabic is the main language), by copyright issues or by the desire of the app’s developer or owner to target a specific market for any other reason. It is worth noting that self-censorship can be hidden behind such geo-blocking decision, as developers choose not to release their app in certain App Stores due to specific regulations and requirements as well as to avoid any dispute with Apple’s App Review Board.

Therefore, the availability of an app worldwide (the number of App Stores an app is present in) constitutes a useful indication on the possibility for a given app’s unavailability to be a case of censorship. Most of the apps which are only released in a single App Store, are deliberately made unavailable by their developer/owner. However, even those cases can hide cases of censorship or self-censorship, as some developers may have tried to release their app in other regions in vain or may have been too apprehensive to even try. In a different case scenario, some locally released apps are paired with a sister app, which is offered in all App Stores but the one where the local app is released. Such is the Case for the for the BBC News which has a local app and a global one.

Out of the 2347 apps tested unavailable in Russia on September 15, 1239 apps are found to be present in only one App Store worldwide. Another 569 apps are present in between two and ten App Stores, 301 apps are present in between 11 and 30 App Stores, 94 apps are in between 31 to 50 App Stores, and 144 apps are present in 51 or more App Stores.

Although the vast majority of apps is not tested in all existing App Stores (as this would require the ASM to run millions of tests), partial information on the availability of an app in the App Store globally already gives an indication on the targeted nature of the unavailability of that app in Russia’s App Store: the more available the app is, the more probable it is for it to have been deliberately blocked in Russia’s App Store. Further investigation (i.e. information collected and provided by human sources), is required to obtain conclusive evidence on censorship and its causes.

Detected Changes

From its launch in January 2019, until September 15, 2022, the App Store Monitor has detected 586 “Detected Changes” (i.e. both apps which are deleted or restored in Russia’s App Store). Out of these 586 changes, 237 are app removals:

View the list of all app removals from Russia’s App Store detected by the App Store Monitor between January 2019 and September 2022

Only 22 of these removals occurred in 2021 ; 180 removals were detected in 2022. Such increase in the number of detected deletions is partly due to the ASM augmenting its monitoring of Russia’s App Store after the war in Ukraine started, a decision taken in the last days of February 2022. However, this increase of removals also results from a wave of voluntary removals from Russia’s App Store initiated by app developers and owners, either to show their support of Ukraine or to comply with sanctions imposed by the European Union or specific governments (see the section “The dangerous opacity behind app removals in wartime”.

Targeted Censorship: Categorical Bans

One of the main obstacles to producing a complete picture of Apple’s policing of the App Store is the absence of information and figures for apps removed regionally due to governments targeting of certain categories of apps or blanket restrictions requested by said governments.

While Apple communicates (poorly) on government requests relating to one or more specific apps, they do not disclose the number of apps removed due to governments requesting that Apple reject or take down all apps of a particular kind or category. In fact, this type of removal is barely acknowledged by Apple. Blanket restrictions allow governments to ensure the removal or rejection of apps by Apple without having to issue a request for every app it wants to ban. Those restrictions lead to “proactive removals”: app removals or rejections initiated by Apple itself, in accordance to concealed blanket restrictions or for other politically motivated reason, such as Apple trying to avoid the ire of a government. As it has been confirmed by the New York Times in the case of China, Apple does elaborate blacklists of content that should not be uploaded in specific App Stores.

Like in China’s App Store, patterns of app removals from Russia’s App Store detected by the ASM suggest that specific groups of apps could be targeted by the Russian authorities and/or that such system of Apple-enforced bans and proactive removals are in place in Russia’s App Store.

Apple’s public relations teams have communicated on a number of occasions on proactive removals. In fact, Apple is proud of the global takedowns effected under its App Store guidelines, stating that the review process will always reject or remove ‘content or behavior that we believe is over the line’. However, the review process itself is scarcely spoken about by Apple or its employees. Apple’s opacity extends to discussions of its internal content curation process, where lines between removals of existing apps and pre-publication rejections (i.e. apps prevented from being offered on the App Store) are blurred and the company commingled its own guidelines with government interests.

Sensitive Categories of Apps in Russia

Such tactics by Apple have led AppleCensorship to elaborate and monitor specific ad hoc “categories” of sensitive apps. The following categorical lists of apps currently unavailable in Russia’s App Store are composed of apps which have a higher probability of having been censored by Apple. A selection of unavailable apps in Russia’s App Store was made and the selected apps were regrouped in five categories of potentially “sensitive” apps : “dating, relationship and LGBTQ+ related apps”, VPN and private browsing apps”, “information, media, news, TV & radio apps”, “Digital Security & Privacy apps”, and “Social media & communication tools”. A sixth category, “other, tools”, has been created to regroup apps which are not by nature sensitive, but for which information on availability worldwide seems to indicate geo-blocking in Russia’s App Store.

Dating, Relationship and LGBTQ+ Related Apps

LGBTQ+ related apps constitute the most prominent type of apps being unavailable in Russia’s App Store, with at least 25 apps currently unavailable, including some of the most popular LGBTQ+ apps worldwide. LGBTQ+ related apps have continually disappeared over the last few years, leading to a widespread restriction of access to such apps worldwide, as detailed by AppleCensorship’s report on censorship of LGBTQ+ apps published in June 2021.

VPN and Private Browsing Apps

In March and June this year, the Russian authorities confirmed that crackdowns to prevent citizens from accessing VPN services was underway. In March, 200 VPN websites were blocked by Roskomnadzor, and in June the authority said that “measures” were being taken to limit access to VPN services that violate Russian law. The majority of removals of VPN apps detected by the ASM, occurred after the start of the war.

Information, Media, News, TV & Radio Apps

The crackdown on independent media in Russia, which has accelerated during the pandemic in 2020 and worsened this year after the start of the war, is one of the most serious signal of deterioration of the political situation and human rights inside Russia. The government has labeled many independent media as foreign agents and has targeted individual journalists with harassment and prosecution. The regime hit a new high in March, with a media law that criminalizes objective reporting about the war in Ukraine and which threatens those who violate it with 15 years in prison. Many independent media outlets have been forced to shut down and more than 150 local journalists are reported to have gone into exile. Access to outside media sources have been blocked, with Russian citizens unable to directly access the BBC, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and other U.S. and European news sources.

Although Russia’s App Store does not reflect the present government-controlled media landscape, the list of unavailable news apps continues to grow as the App Store Monitor unveils new foreign media blocked or removed from Russia’s App Store. While most of the apps providing news can be found in the eponymous category, some apps, such as Spotify New Music and Podcasts and TuneIn Radio: News & Music App, which gives access to VOA networks radios, belong to the Music category or even to the Business category. Apple’s Apple TV app remained available in Russia’s App Store as of September 15, 2022.

Digital Security & Privacy Apps

Along with many VPN apps, a number of digital security, privacy oriented and network related tools became unavailable after the start of the war. However, many of apps tested by the ASM were only tested in Russia’s App Store for the first time after the start of the war, making it very difficult to ascertain if those apps were already unavailable before the war. Such is the case for Avira, McAfee, Norton and Avast security apps.

Social Media & Communication Tools

After blocking Twitter on March 4, and banning Meta (Facebook) and Instagram on March 21 for hosting ‘extremist” content, the Russian authorities intimidated other platforms using new laws criminalizing “fake” news and anti-war stances. YouTube (and its affiliated apps) remains available in the country’s App Store along with other popular platforms such as TikTok and Snapchat without any temporary removal having been detected by the ASM.

Communication tools owned by Russian tech company Yandex (now partly owned by government-controlled company VK), remained available as of September 15, 2022 this report. However, less than two weeks after the period covered by the present lists, Apple removed all apps owned by Russian company VKontakte (aka VK) including “VK: social network, messenger”, a Russian equivalent of Facebook, and the email application “Почта Mail.ru” from all App Stores where the apps were previously available. The implications and impact caused by these removals, as well as Apple’s content curation policies related to compliance with sanctions is discussed later in this report.

Other Tools

The following table does not consist of particularly sensitive apps. However, the availability of these apps worldwide seems to indicate a deliberate removal from Russia’s App Store (or an intended unavailability from the day the app was released).

App Store Case Studies

A number of high profile cases illustrate the disproportionate power that Apple holds on apps and apps developers as well as the company’s readiness to curb free speech and freedom of information when it means securing its profit generated by a presence in the Russian market.

In January 2017, shortly after having removed the New York Times app from its China’s App Store, Apple removed the LinkedIn app from Russia’s store. Apple’s decision followed a demand from Roskomnadzor, which had blocked the professional network several weeks prior its request sent to Apple and Google. The app remains unavailable in Russia (along China) as of today.

More recent cases, such as the request to remove Telegram Messenger in 2018 and the removal of Alexey Navalny’s Smart Voting app (Навальный) reveal even more on the mechanics governing Apple’s relationship with the Russian government and on the extent of Apple’s ability to censor content.

Telegram.app (2018)

In April 2018, a Russian court had announced that the secure messaging app Telegram was banned in Russia because the app had refused to provide a backdoor for the Russian government to decrypt and surveil messages sent on the platform. However, the app remained available in the Russian version of Apple’s App Store for almost two months.

At the end of May 2018, Roskomnadzor asked Apple to remove the app from the App Store and block it from sending push notifications to local users. Creating the appearance of Apple weighing in favor of the Russian government, Apple prevented Telegram from updating the App Store in February 2018 until the app was resubmitted with requested changes. Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, denounced Apple’s refusal to allow the messaging service’s software to be updated globally.

“Apple has been preventing Telegram from updating its iOS apps globally ever since the Russian authorities ordered Apple to remove Telegram from the App Store,” explains Durov in a Telegram message. “While Russia makes up only 7 percent of Telegram’s user base, Apple is restricting updates for all Telegram users around the world since mid-April.”

We call on @Amazon, @Google, @Microsoft, and @Apple to resist Russia's internet censorship campaign.

Stand for human rights by ensuring @Telegram's access to their platforms and allowing them to change IP addresses without limit. https://t.co/bP668FnOt2

— ACLU (@ACLU) April 18, 2018

The revelation made by Durov was significant because it undercut the supposed importance that Apple’s chief executive, Tim Cook, had publicly placed on privacy and encrypted communication, and added to criticism that Apple too easily acquiesces to the demands of foreign governments.

“Russia banned Telegram on its territory in April because we refused to provide decryption keys for all our users’ communications to Russia’s security agencies,” Durov said in a statement posted to his official Telegram channel. “We believe we did the only possible thing, preserving the right of our users to privacy in a troubled country. Unfortunately, Apple didn’t side with us,” he continued.

Apple finally approved Telegram’s app updates in June 2018 following public outcry.

Nalvany’s SmartVoting.app : Навальный (Navalny) (2021)

On September 17, 2021, Apple removed an app developed by Russian activists working with jailed Kremlin critic and opposition leader Alexei Navalny from Russia’s App Store after Russia accused the American technology companies (Apple, Google) of election interference, and threatened fines and criminal prosecutions, while also calling Navalny supporters “extremists.”

The tactical voting app, named “Navalny” (Навальный) allowed voters who did not want President Vladimir Putin’s ruling political party, ‘United Russia’, to win the election, to organize around a single opposition candidate in each of the 225 legislative constituencies used in Russia to elect half of the seats in the State Duma Parliament, in an effort to boost the number of non-Kremlin-approved politicians in power.

“Removing the Navalny app from stores is a shameful act of political censorship,” said Ivan Zhdanov, former Anti-Corruption Foundation head and a Navalny ally, in a statement on Twitter. “Russia’s authoritarian government and propaganda will be thrilled.”

Thread.

(1/14) If something surprised me in the latest elections, it was not how Putin forged the results, but how obediently the almighty Big Tech turned into his accomplices.

— Alexey Navalny (@navalny) September 23, 2021

On the same day, on Twitter, Ivan Zhdanov shared a message received from Apple where the company explained that the Navalny app had been blocked for users inside Russia because it “includes content that is illegal in Russia, which is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.”

On September 23, Alexey Navalny published a thread on Twitter to share his views on the removal of his app by Apple and Google: “If something surprised me in the latest elections, it was not how Putin forged the results, but how obediently the almighty Big Tech turned into his accomplices,” Navalny said on Twitter.

He also called on employees inside the companies to raise the issue, writing: “I know that most of those who work at Google, Apple, etc. are honest and good people. I urge them not to put up with the cowardice of their bosses.”

“We know this stuff is complicated, but it is your responsibility to understand and make sure your app conforms with all local laws,”
– Apple

Apple went on to say that Russian officials had also determined that the app violated the legislation of the Russian Federation by enabling interference in elections. On Twitter, some users in Russia reported after the app’s removal that the App Store displayed a misleading message when trying to search for the Navalny app, claiming falsely that “the developer deleted this app from the App Store.”

A week after the removal, Al Jazeera reported that Google and Apple had caved in to pressure when the Russian government turned to threats of criminal prosecution of their Russia-based staff. Court marshals had visited Google’s Moscow headquarters to demand that the company’s search engine stop returning results referring to the ‘Smart Voting’ app.

Ahead of the 2021 parliamentary elections, the Russian government started blocking Russian Internet users’ access to the ‘Smart Voting’ app on various platforms. Roskomnadzor also ordered Apple, Google, Cloudflare, and Cisco to withhold services to the project that allowed it to circumvent Russia’s censorship efforts.

If many tech companies were targeted by Russian authorities’ pressuring demands, none played a more important role in enforcing Roskomndazor’s censorship than Apple.

QUIZ: What is the largest Western company that not only refused to leave the Russian market after Putin started the war, but also actively keeps helping Putin to enforce wartime censorship?

Thread (1/n):

— Leonid Volkov (@leonidvolkov) April 4, 2022

Well, I think this is the situation where public pressure could be helpful. Please share! @Apple should stop helping Putin; @Apple should stop enforcing Putin's censorship.

Restore our application as well as those of independent media. Shut down the office in Russia.
Now.

— Leonid Volkov (@leonidvolkov) April 4, 2022

On the day following the app’s removal, the attention turned to Telegram, which also announced the removal of Navalny’s ‘Smart Voting’ services from Telegram. In a statement published on its personal channel, Telegram’s founder Pavel Durov said he was compelled to remove Navalny’s ‘Smart Voting’ bots from its platform:

“Telegram, like all other mobile apps, depends on the Apple and Google ecosystems to keep going. In particular, without the support of these companies, Telegram could not have remained accessible to the majority of Russian users during the 2018-2020 blocking period. Apple and Google have already approached us this year to remove publicly available information in accordance with the laws of individual countries, under the threat of removing Telegram from the Google Play and App Store app catalogs. Now, judging by their blocking of the Smart Voting app, this practice has spread to Russia. Changes in policy from Apple and Google will inevitably affect Telegram, as they are at the top of the information food chain as creators of the two major mobile operating systems and can dictate the rules of the game for developers like us. This is sad, but expected: I have written more than once that the oligopoly of Apple and Google is a threat to free speech.”
(full statement in Russian)

Both Google and Apple threatened to remove Telegram from their store if it did not comply with their demands. However, only Apple’s threat meant that Telegram could disappear for all iOS users worldwide, as, in case of Google’s removal from the Play Store, Android users would have still been able to download the app from Telegram’s or other third parties’ website.

Apple’s direct interference in a third party’s app hosted in its App Store, was not the first case of this type. However, it confirmed the firm’s far-reaching ability to control content made by users of other services not related to Apple. This case also illustrates how companies such as Apple, manipulate their ‘middle-man’ status to enforce decisions in their interest while denying legal responsibility for hosting or enabling third-party content.

“Google, Apple and other Big Tech companies are no longer simply tech start-ups disrupting the Internet, they’re now infrastructure companies that impact people everywhere,” said Tanya Lokot, an Internet freedom researcher and professor at Dublin City University in Ireland. “They haven’t really caught up to this. They still don’t want to accept how much responsibility they bear for what happens to millions, if not billions, of people around the world.”

However, no public statement was given by the United States government, where both of these companies are based. The US State Department declined to comment directly on the matter, instead issuing broad statements about freedom of expression.

A few days after the app’s removal was revealed, Sascha Meinrath, a Penn State University professor who studies online censorship issues said: “Now this is the poster child for political oppression.” Google and Apple “have bolstered the probability of this happening again.”

Apple quietly restored the app in April 2022 and in August 2022 Navalny’s staff announced they planned to release new Smart Voting recommendations for the September gubernatorial elections. “We believe that this is the election that will give us the greatest chance of doing damage to Putin and his party of warmongers. That’s why we’re calling for all Muscovites to come together to vote in protest,” read the initiative’s site. No censorship was reported and the elections resulted in a landslide victory for Putin’s party “United Russia’.

Apple’s knee-bending to Putin with Navalny in 2021 following the Landing Law did not just hurt the Russian opposition’s ability to communicate to the Russian people - it also marked the dangerous effectiveness of a new Kremlin policy: force foreign tech firms to put employees on the ground, so they can then be coerced and threatened into doing the Kremlin’s bidding.

Even after the Landing Law and related intimidation, as of August 2022, a significant number of senior Apple employees still list their Apple office location as “Moscow, Russia” or “Russia” We reached out to some of these Apple employees to see if they were willing to comment but none of them responded.