Recent years have brought about improvements in corporate transparency regarding content takedown requests by governments. Google and Twitter, for instance, specify details of content takedowns in their transparency reports, allowing to identify which government authority demanded what content to be removed and why.
However, little to almost no transparency exists when it comes to mobile app stores. Mobile app stores are a sort of marketplace on phones and allow for the download of health, productivity, privacy, and other apps. These marketplaces are very opaque, and it is a challenge to know why an app was removed. Is it for financial, legal, or political reasons?
Research Affiliate Valentin Weber discusses the implications and importance of these issues in his OxPol blogpost.
Read the blogpost here
