There's a reason why centrally curated platforms are dangerous, and why Free Software Principals reject them.
What's with the downvotes? More censorship?
For context, the app was created to track human rights abuses during the disclosure of the US's covert surveillance and assassination program in the Middle East. This was a scandal for the United States because it was disclosed that they were killing innocent people with knowledge and through reclassification, even killing children (internally using the terminology "fun sized terrorists").
The pressure to remove the app was brought to Apple during a sweep to control the scandal and public perception of the program.
(Given the public conversation has moves far past the scandal, and the Trump administration continues the indiscriminate assassinations, that censorship program does seem to have succeeded)
It's also a fairly low-value proposition for a native app, in my opinion. It's really the kind of content worthy of a web page, that's about it. Not sure that contributes to Apple's vendetta against it, however.
I agree with you, and think its endemic of the app ecosystem.