Adding barriers to passive consumption, by vulnerable (misinformed) people, is probably also a good thing. It's not being censored/outlawed, just made slightly less convenient to access. Fake news are a threat to democracy.
In practice that's not what happens.
So yeah, I'm not shedding a tear over IW (though they probably have a point, on one occasion or another. Other media address these points so it's not dependant on them)
However, I think we should make the tradeoff explicit here. Just saying "Apple shouldn't do this because it's censorship, and censorship is bad" is a rather naive attitude. I would argue two things:
1. This isn't censorship, it's a refusal to broadcast. It's one thing to say "You can't say that", and another to say "I'm not going to allow you to use our platform to say that." The government is not allowed to prevent speech, but that doesn't mean that private companies are required to enable it.
2. It's not "fake" news. It's fake. It's literally made up stories, about child sex rings in pizza parlors and slave colonies on Mars.
So you might say, what's the harm in making up stuff? Well, people are shooting up restaurants and making on-air death threats to journalists and generally gravitating towards authoritarian viewpoints sponsored by organizations such as infowars. And guess what tool authoritarians love to employ? CENSORSHIP. Failing to hold these jokers accountable for their words and instigation actually and inevitably leads us farther down the path towards actual censorship than refusing to give them a platform. I would rather companies take a stand against this stuff than just allow them to exploit our misguided notions of democratic rule to undermine actual democratic rule.
It is, just like we need to teach kids not to drink poison. But we also don't use "we need to teach kids not to drink poison" as an excuse to leave easily drinkable poison in reach.
At some point, we'll have educated people better on how to do their own critical thinking. But we're not there yet, and acting as if we were isn't a strategy for success.
It doesn't just show up in your podcast feed.
What sorts of demands would be listened to or have any chance of being effective if not having the weight of force of law behind it?
It is an awful misconceptions that the only way to effectively get other people to act differently is with law. It is lazy and leads to unnecessary use of force. Most things that are bad are not illegal (e.g., lying to your friends, being mean, abandoning your parents, cheating on your spouse) and yet occur at much lower rates than they would without the many extra-legal mechanisms that keep them in check.