> Instagram doesn't linkify URLs in comments or descriptions.
This is a personal preference you have that Instagram decided against in order to offer a slightly larger barrier to scams. Not a great example.
> This is what killed Tumblr and ruins the photography site 500px's native app.
I know nothing about 500px, but forcing PG-13 killed Tumblr because Tumblr was built on NSFW. They tried to pivot too late. Apple has never had their brand wrapped up in NSFW—on the contrary, their brand is explicitly family-friendly and this policy is designed to keep it that way.
Honestly, there may well be a coordinated war on freedom of expression, but your examples kind of suck. Each of them is trivially explained by companies pursuing their own goals in ways that are only vaguely related to each other and only tangentially related to freedom of expression.
This is a personal preference you have that Instagram decided against in order to offer a slightly larger barrier to scams. Not a great example.
> This is what killed Tumblr and ruins the photography site 500px's native app.
I know nothing about 500px, but forcing PG-13 killed Tumblr because Tumblr was built on NSFW. They tried to pivot too late. Apple has never had their brand wrapped up in NSFW—on the contrary, their brand is explicitly family-friendly and this policy is designed to keep it that way.
Honestly, there may well be a coordinated war on freedom of expression, but your examples kind of suck. Each of them is trivially explained by companies pursuing their own goals in ways that are only vaguely related to each other and only tangentially related to freedom of expression.