The value of manual reviews seems to be undermined by the inconsistency from the perspective of the developer.
It seems like Apple's intent here is to create an ecosystem with a general rule of "don't be a prat", but is struggling to quantify the precise definition of "prat", and where the line sits, and what sits closest to the line, on each side of it.
That Apple doesn't allow anyone else to provide payment services or app distribution is a separate question of antitrust, but increasingly it looks like (putting aside the cash cow nature of extracting revenue from developers) this is starting to become a problem that doesn't have an Apple-esque problem to it.
Content moderation is inherently quite subjective, as the hyper scale social platforms are discovering. Apple is effectively trying to do highly technical content moderation, through (as I understand it) a web of outsourced contractors with varying levels of understanding of the content matter. It's starting to get to the point where this will surely impact on consumer confidence and reputation? Apple's annual SEC filings acknowledge the potential material revenue impact if they can't continue to hold a monopoly on payment processing and distribution on the store.
It seems like any antitrust/competition action taken there may implicitly force the issue of app review to be fixed or disrupted (allowing competing stores would let them do their own review, or choose not to do manual review as they wish). Perhaps that's the long-term likely outcome, even if not one Apple would wish today. They could then use their walled garden as a competitive differentiator and see if they can compete with others to win customers on that basis. That could give a very significant incentive to improve the developer experience, lest developers shift to a store with a better experience.