App store: How does region specific app censorship work?

[LarTeROn]

I've never been able to use an iPhone because I always considered the walled garden too much of a risk. However, it still affects me because so many people I know use iPhones, so I need to educate myself as to how app bans actually work.

I'm in Hong Kong, China, and in addition to VPN apps, messaging apps have been deleted off the app store.

However, which app store? How does it work? How is a Chinese iPhone different from an iPhone bought elsewhere? Is it that the control starts at the billing address of your app store registered credit card? Or an ID card required for an apple account? Or an IP address you registered from? Or your IP address at the time you connect to the app store, or what?

 

[JPack]

Not sure why your VPN and messaging apps are "deleted" from the App Store. They're all available in Hong Kong.

To download apps from different countries in the App Store, all you have to do is change your Country/Region associated with your iCloud account. This can be done in less than 10 seconds in the App Store. You can then download TikTok or Douyin for example and then switch back.