No Kings, No Monopolies: How App Store Gatekeepers Enable Authoritarianism

Last month, Americans rallied against the Trump administration’s sweeping authoritarian power grabs under a unifying banner—“No Kings”—invoking the nation’s founding tradition. But the founders also understood that casting off the chains of monarchy requires breaking the shackles of monopoly. The 1776 Boston Tea Party, for instance, repudiated not just King George’s crown, but his grant of a tea monopoly to the British East India Company.

A century later, as Congress debated the nation’s first federal antitrust laws, Senator John Sherman echoed: “If we will not endure a king as a political power… we should not submit to an autocrat of trade.” Today, the marriage between private and public power is as strong as ever. In his farewell address, President Biden warned of an increasingly powerful “tech-industrial complex.” Days later, that warning proved prescient as the Big Tech oligarchs took front row seats at Donald Trump’s inauguration.

The corrosive effects of concentrated economic power on democracy can often feel abstract. But they snapped into sharp focus when Apple and Google, under pressure from the Trump administration, removed ICEBlock, Red Dot, and similar apps—tools that allow citizens to crowdsource sightings of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) officials—from their app stores. Just yesterday, digital rights watchdogs sued the Department of Justice (“DOJ”) and the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) to uncover whether the administration’s demands amounted to unconstitutional censorship.

But crucially, this kind of coercion only works because of Apple and Google’s dominance over app distribution—a mobile operating system duopoly, each with its own exclusive app store. In a world with genuine competition among app stores, a few companies’ decisions to remove an app would hardly matter; users and developers could simply turn elsewhere.

The current marketplace leaves consumers and citizens—nearly all of whom use either an iOS or an Android device—dependent on a single gatekeeper, vulnerable to its whims. And in an era when civic organizing and dissent increasingly flow through digital platforms, Big Tech’s concentrated power is a boon to authoritarian regimes seeking to censor, manipulate, or control: they need only make one or two companies buckle under to achieve their ends. This episode illustrates that economic consolidation is not just a market failure but a systemic risk for democracy itself, and it should serve as the principal exemplar in the case for stronger competition policies needed to open up the digital markets that shape our civic lives.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has unleashed ICE on many American cities: masked federal agents detaining people without due process; US citizens apprehended based on little more than skin color; a Pastor shot in the head by a pepper ball while inviting ICE agents to prayer during a protest. In one reported military-style raid in Chicago, ICE stormed a residential building in the dead of night, kicking down doors, deploying flash grenades, and pointing guns. Witnesses reported that ICE agents swept up residents, restraining them in zip-ties, including children—some of whom were without clothes.

Given the sheer volume of ICE’s potentially unlawful activity, it is hardly surprising that citizens have taken to documenting abuses. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker urged citizens: “get your phones out—record and narrate what you see… We need to let the world know that this is happening, and that we won’t stand for it.” In one instance, a federal agent in New York was placed on leave after being filmed throwing a woman to the ground. As Pritzker noted, “that wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t on camera.”

Efforts to document ICE’s campaign rely on the ability of citizens to share real-time information about the presence of federal agents. Apps like ICEBlock and Red Dot were designed to make that possible, mirroring how mainstream mapping tools—including Apple Maps and Google Maps—rely on users to anonymously report speed traps. As its developers described it, ICEBlock resembles “Waze but for ICE sightings.”

Using a mobile app to share such information is no different, constitutionally, from reporting it through traditional media—both are protected by the First Amendment. Nevertheless, the Trump administration — which has had few qualms about pressuring private companies to suppress protected free speech — demanded Apple remove all such apps, arguing that they endanger ICE agents. Apple complied, deeming the apps “Objectionable Content.” While existing users can still access ICEBlock, new users can no longer download it. Although ICEBlock was never available on the Google Play Store, the company followed Apple’s lead by removing similar apps—including Red Dot—reportedly citing ICE agents as a “vulnerable group.”

This forcefully handicaps citizens’ ability to document and protest federal encroachment because Apple and Google each command a monopolistic chokehold over app distribution on their respective operating systems. Together, iOS and Android account for 99.7% of the US mobile operating system market—Apple with just under 60% and Google with just over 40%. The Department of Justice has even alleged that Apple—whose smartphones all operate on iOS—illegally monopolized the performance smartphone market through a variety of tactics designed to raise switching costs and trap users within its iPhone ecosystem.

Apple and Google leverage their dominance to maintain tight control over app distribution. As it stands, Apple disallows all third-party app stores on iOS devices, while on Android, the pre-installed Google Play Store accounts for over 95% of app downloads, with limited ability for rival stores to enter. In practice, the two app stores are the sole distribution channels through which developers can reach iPhone and Android users. This arrangement allows both gatekeepers to levy commissions of up to 30%—effectively a monopoly tax—on all in-app purchases, from subscription fees to Minecraft skins, thereby turning app stores into digital fiefdoms where developers have no real alternative but to pay for the privilege of reaching their own users.

Developers have tried to circumvent these fees. In 2020, Epic Games introduced its own direct payment system in Fortnite, attempting to bypass the commissions charged by Apple and Google. In retaliation, Apple and Google removed the game from their stores, prompting Epic to sue each company under antitrust law, alleging deliberate anticompetitive exclusion of rival app stores.

In the Apple case, a federal court sided mostly with Apple, but required it to allow developers to inform users about alternative payment options—a decision later upheld on appeal. Two years later, Epic Games largely prevailed against Google after a jury trial unearthed how the company had paid billions of dollars to potential entrants—including Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty) and Riot Games (League of Legends)—to keep their app stores off Android, and had offered lower commission rates to large app developers like Spotify in exchange for exclusive distribution on the Google Play Store. The ruling prohibits Google from forcing Play Store developers to exclusively use its in-app billing system—a decision recently upheld in the Ninth Circuit.

Nonetheless, the harms from Apple and Google’s duopoly extend well beyond in-app purchases. Vigorous competition drives traditional brick-and-mortar stores to slash their prices or fill unmet gaps in consumer demand. Why should the market for digital stores operate differently? A truly competitive app store market could be diverse and colorful. Platforms would compete not only by lowering developer fees but also by differentiating their products. Specialty app stores could emerge tailored for interests, such as sports, gaming, or music. As Professor Fiona Scott Morton suggests, such “curative creation” might include green app stores that help users reduce their carbon footprint or parent-curated stores for their children’s devices.

Perhaps most importantly, rival app stores could meet unmet civic demand, stepping up to offer citizens the democratic tools they need—like ICEBlock and Red Dot. Monopoly power over app distribution gives Big Tech the license to arbitrate which apps citizens can use. In the 21st century, this chokehold not only affects how consumers interact with the economy but also how citizens engage with their republic. We use apps to share stories, express views, and form communities. As Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney articulated, “every politician should fear” Apple’s power, as it can “decide who is allowed to say what.” Nor does that power only affect one political side: in 2021, Apple and Google removed Parler—the social media platform once popular with conservatives—from their stores for hosting the violent rhetoric that helped to fuel the January 6 insurrection.

Competition can help insulate our republic against authoritarian forces that seek to exploit monopoly bottlenecks to undermine democracy. For example, economic consolidation enabled Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime to seize totalitarian control over industry and wield it for horrific ends. As former FTC Chair Lina Khan recently noted after Jimmy Kimmel’s temporary removal from his talk show, “it is so much easier to [concentrate political control] when you have an economy that is as concentrated as we have today.”

How can we spark competition in app store markets? In 2022, the European Union (“EU”) enacted the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”), a landmark law designed to open digital platform markets. The DMA focuses on large digital “gatekeepers” such as Apple, Google, Amazon, and Meta—platforms that control access between businesses and consumers—and imposes obligations designed to ensure fairness and contestability. Among its sweeping measures, the law prohibits conditioning the use of one core platform service (e.g., iOS) on another (e.g., the App Store) and mandates gatekeepers to allow third-party app stores—dismantling, for instance, Apple’s long-standing ban on rival stores for iOS. As a result, consumers in Europe will now have access to multiple independent third-party app stores.

To meaningfully curb Big Tech’s monopoly power, Congress should enact similar legislation. The bipartisan American Innovation and Choice Online Act—introduced in 2021 by Senators Amy Klobuchar and Chuck Grassley—offers a promising start by similarly prohibiting digital platform intermediaries from self-preferencing their own products to shut out competition.

Indeed, as our founders understood, “No Kings” also means “No Monopolies.” Democracy requires that no private empires can draw the boundaries of the public square.

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The views expressed above belong solely to the author and do not reflect the position or opinions of their employer.