I feel I understand how this happened. I’ve gone through the process multiple times - smooth sailing for many apps to getting rejected for 4 months de facto (we’re rejecting you know we will be back in touch) only to be told, “you download YouTube videos” … for a text based app with no download features!
What I think is this: apple is optimizing for a 24 hour turn around time. That means many systems do high level checks: entitlements, api calls, then simulator based testing. This means that if one targets specifically for simulator, there are certain ways around what is presented to AppStore, vs what is published. Further, there appears to be a check for similar references only in the target categories, or the terms placed in the App Review request. So gaming all of these features at once can lead to extremely smooth sailing by an organized effort.