Apple is not just a hardware company and there is no obligation for them to host offending contents on their servers - just as Dropbox, Google, and so on would maintain with theirs.
>As for your suggestions to just "stop using iCloud Photos", how about we get to enjoy the features we bought our devices for, without stuff we didn't ask for and don't want?
It's odd to say that a business shouldn't be allowed to police what's on their platform, given we're on a forum explicitly enabling entrepreneurs.
It's odd to say that a business should be allowed to police private user content, given we're on a forum with the name "Hacker" on it, built by ex-hackers, and with part of its member's interests heritage not in and "enabling enterpreneurs" but in hacking (in the MIT sense of yore).
Who said it's running "arbitrarily"? Who said it's not about iCloud Photos?
>Your photos were compared before and they're being compared now... if you're using iCloud Photos.
They weren't always compared, they started being compared a few years ago, and they moved to comparing them with a new scheme now.
Both are bad, and not the responsibility of a company selling phones - and also a bad precedent (now it's "think of the children", tomorrow "think of the country", then "think of those with wrong ideas", then "think how much money insurance companies can save" and what have you).
As for your suggestions to just "stop using iCloud Photos", how about we get to enjoy the features we bought our devices for, without stuff we didn't ask for and don't want?