China forced Apple to remove any app where the developer isn’t registered in China. Meaning they asked Apple to remove 95% of the apps and games available in the App Store.
Poor iPhone users, basically they will get a “wechat handheld” and that’s it…
F-Droid has censorship resistance built in, it lets you share apps locally via bluetooth. It would be difficult, but I can imagine a bunch of protestors sharing apps, getting a mesh communication network going (like briar), all without clearnet access.
Not to mention lots of countries have “shut down internet access” in their protest playbook, so the freedom of speech, human rights, tech-bros are building the technology to work without internet.