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Why do they need to change anything?

As far as I know a privacy policy has zero legal weight, that is, a company can put anything it wants into the privacy policy, it has no effect on what is actually done.

Yes and this actually is the same when you publish an app in the App Store.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but under the previous process, submitting a policy with an update freezes it to a specific version. That holds the developer to account at least for that update.

In the end a privacy policy is little more than the proverbial "ink on a piece of paper". It's doesn't actually prevent anything. Where and how it's published seems like a minor detail.