> but watch out for Ublock and 1Block, which are also top App Store results.
Honestly this is more of an App Store issue than an Adblock one. For all of Apple's purported talents in curation, they really cannot seem to filter out the odd trojan horses: https://blog.lastpass.com/posts/warning-fraudulent-app-imper...
There are dubious results for "uBlock" as well on browser extension stores. If it's not breaking rules (copyright violation, malware) it's precarious for companies to take action. It's obvious to me that uBlock Origin is the "correct" result, but how would a company determine that at scale?
The app was removed a day after your article was posted. The app name, developer, icon, and images are all different. It's absolutely a problem, but it was addressed.
If Apple aggressively took action against this with a high error rate, the headlines would probably be about anti-competition, censorship, and upset developers.
> but how would a company determine that at scale?
Two-way signature validation. Apple distributes unique developer IDs; make the dev sign the app locally before uploading it, like Google does for the Play Store. If those trojan horses still make it through Apple's manual inspection process, then they need to fire everyone working for the App Store and replace them with AI.
> If Apple aggressively took action against this with a high error rate
They need to take action. Apple's entire argument for an App Store monopoly is that they curate apps individually before they're uploaded to ensure a baseline of quality. When they stop vetting apps and allow the App Store to become like every other store, their argument in favor of monopoly control evaporates.
So yes, it would be anti-competitive censorship, but that's nothing Apple hasn't done before. The real issue is that their "premium" store interface is getting shown-up by the Google Play services. At the going rate there won't be anti-competitive behavior to complain about since Apple will be forced to accept competing storefronts - and they have no one to blame but themselves.