"I'm not saying that Apple is being malicious -- they have a billion apps in that store," Higgins said. "It's not that they're doing the wrong thing on purpose. It's just too big a job for anyone to be expected to regulate all that."

He notes, though, that the bans haven't always been about porn or spam or inefficient apps.

Last year, an app that would have pinpointed the location of U.S. drone strikes in the Middle East was rejected multiple times. And two years ago, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mark Fiore's app was rejected because it "contains content that ridicules public officials." (It was eventually approved after public outcry.)

"That's pretty plainly political speech," Higgins said of the apps.

Apple did not reply to questions submitted for this article.

But the company makes no bones about having tight controls on the App Store.

"If it sounds like we're control freaks, well, maybe it's because we're so committed to our users and making sure they have a quality experience with our products," the company writes in its App Store review guidelines.

Google has guidelines for its Google Play mobile store. But they tend to be looser than Apple's. The Android system also lets apps from outside stores be loaded onto the phones and tablets that use it.

Google also did not reply to a request for comment.

That, of course, opens up the user to the possibilities Jobs mentioned -- call it Android's wild, and potentially dangerous, jungle outside of Apple's aforementioned garden.

Regardless of the specifics of their approaches, though, these companies are making decisions that, rhetoric aside, are never wholly about the end users' rights or concerns.

"Their job is to make money by cultivating a base of customers," said Forrester's McQuivey. "If they deem some content will harm that relationship, they are free to ban it.

"As a result, traditional thoughts about government censorship or control are no longer relevant -- no matter how upsetting that will be to people on either side of this particular debate."