Apple demanded our apps filter some search terms from being returned

Apple can't paste parental controls over an external service. The only thing they can do is not distribute the app until it does provide parental controls, which is what's happening now.

Apple is declining to distribute the app on their store because it doesn't meet their safety and moderation standards. Lbry clearly doesn't meet the standards, and AFAIK don't really intend to moderate the service at all. This isn't censorship.

Censoring lbry would be blocking the domain on all ios devices, meaning you couldn't even access it through a browser. The app store has rules, and lbry doesn't want to follow those rules, and this is the consequence.

Whether or not those rules are a good thing is a separate conversation, but it's in the general category of Brands and Moderation that's being discussed everywhere these days.

I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. How did you find out that lbry was largely uncensored and unmoderated?

If you showed lbry to your parents, what would they think? My bet is they'd think it is or is like YouTube. I doubt very seriously that any random person just finding out about lbry would expect to find snuff videos when they're searching for anything.

Even on an open browser, you just don't randomly bump into extreme shit on the same scale of lbry. I've run into such things maybe a dozen or so times in the decades I've been online, and then several dozen times in the year or two I used lbry.

The scale is different, and the expectation is different. People understand and expect that a browser can show you anything, and we've had parental controls on browsers for decades. Also, browsers don't host and distribute content, they allow you to access anything from anyone, and you generally have to make a conscious effort to find something.

Lbry hosts and distributes extreme content, with no real intention to moderate it. In addition, it's extremely common to accidentally run into something like a snuff video or straight up porn.

Lbry could moderate this kind of thing on their service, a browser cannot moderate the entire internet. That's what Apple is objecting to.

When you look at YouTube, then look at lbry, the expectation is that lbry will show you similar things to YouTube.

Yes, extreme content exists on YouTube, but there's two things that make it different. Such content is not allowed on YouTube and is usually removed quickly, and it generally doesn't pop up with the consistency and regularity that it does on lbry.

I've used YouTube for years and I think I've seen something objectionable less than ten times. On lbry, I saw something every single time I searched for anything.

The extreme content on lbry is an order of magnitude over what you might stumble into on YouTube. It's also much, much more common to accidentally find on lbry than on a browser.

Apple doesn't want an app that willingly distributes such content with no intention of moderating it. Compare that concept to safari. Safari doesn't host and distribute content, and cannot conceivably moderate the entire internet. This is about one service not moderating extreme content.