Apple’s recent purge of 'vibe coding' apps like Replit and Vibecode is being framed as a victory for cybersecurity. Don't believe it. This is a cold-blooded defense of a corporate monopoly. Vibe coding—building software with natural language prompts—was threatening to bypass the App Store’s toll booths. Apple can’t allow a world where a coach or a product manager can build a functional app in a day without paying the 30 percent 'vibe tax.'

But there is no hero in this story. The 'vibe coders' are themselves a parasite class. A recent paper, 'Vibe Coding Kills Open Source,' exposes the mechanism: AI models mine existing open-source codebases, regurgitating the labor of thousands of developers without contributing a single line of new logic back to the well. It is a deskilling machine. It turns software engineering into a 'slop' industry where quantity replaces quality. Apple isn't protecting you from 'slopsquatting'; they are protecting their right to be the only landlord in the digital commons.