Does Apple really curate their App Store?

The Betteridge's law of headlines teaches us that the answer to any article title ending with a question mark is most likely "no". In this particular case the answer is not so black-and-white. Apple most certainly does curate their App Store to some extent, but the extent of this curation is governed by money, not by some higher moral prinicples as they like to claim in their ads.

An example of their corporate hypocrisy is nicely demonstrated in this screenshot I took in the iOS App Store.

We all know how much energy is wasted on Bitcoin mining and transactions, and how crypto currencies are mostly used for illegal activity. Bitcoin miners are buying old coal plants to power their business, so how can Apple claim with a straight face to be carbon neutral when they are not only taking money to advertise Bitcoin whose very nature is in direct opposition to their stated environmental goals, but also actively promoting it by placing the ad on the top of Suggested apps list in their, supposedly curated, App Store?

Aside from enormous energy waste and pollution, crypto currencies drive speculation in which gullible people are losing their savings, they drive prices of video cards causing shortages for gamers, developers, and graphics professionals alike, and they enable new forms of criminal behavior (ransomware, trade in illicit goods on dark web, untraceable transactions with Monero).

But the most important thing is that crypto currencies can never replace traditional currencies because they aren't scalable -- I don't know about you, but I would feel bad if I had to wait 10 minutes on average for my morning coffee payment to go through while consuming 1,795 KWh for a single transaction, and if I had to pay the transaction fee more expensive than the coffee itself.

It is about time that Apple puts their money where their mouth is, and ban all crypto apps from the App Store as crypto currencies have so far been a net negative both on the environment and on the society.

If they don't do so, they are proving that removing power chargers from their new products' packaging had nothing to do with environment and everything to do with money, just like those promoted crypto ads.