Keeping out shovelware while also allowing rudimentary but useful apps by new developers is a much harder problem.
They aren’t really connected in any particular way.
There have been many cases ( like Hey ) where Apple justification for removing apps was "We saw you're making money, therefore give us money, even tho we provide zero added value".
This is just something you made up.
Apple’s justification was quite different.
Maybe a year or so ago Amazon started to aggressively pursue legal action against a few people who were abusing their return process. People who were clearly and egregiously stealing millions of dollars from Amazon via fraudulent returns. I haven’t seen any follow-up reporting but I would love to know the numbers behind the cost/benefit. It doesn’t seem to have had any impact on customer experience and I have to imagine there were others similarly abusing the process who have since stopped. I suspect the approach has largely paid off.
Perhaps a more effective solution would be for Apple to aggressively legally pursue bad actors like the group that churns out these apps. Make them hurt financially as an example to the next people who might entertain similar ideas.
If Apple doesn’t start handling this better, eventually there will only be bad/fake apps on the store. Real developers will widely choose not to play the losing game.