To put this as plainly as I possibly can:

1. It is objectively true that Apple and Google accounts are extremely important to many people.

2. It is also objectively true that most users will only need one of each, a few at most. Fraudsters have no such limitations, and may want to create thousands of them per day if the possibility arises.

3. Therefore, it's likely that a significant percentage of all accounts ever created are fraudulent, even if the actual number of fraudsters is much lower. This is the crucial observation many people miss in this debate.

4. Real users do not want constant iMessage spam and other problems resulting from fraudulent accounts remaining open. Therefore, normal users care deeply about fraudulent accounts being closed promptly (and so do money-laundering regulators, but that's another discussion).

5. Normal users also care about their accounts remaining open. Apple has to balance these two problems.

6. If we force Apple (by regulation, PR crisis or any other method) to be softer on closures, the only way to do that without exacerbating #4 is to make opening fraudulent accounts harder.

7. The only reliable way of preventing fraudsters from opening accounts is strict and invasive identity verification.

8. Therefore, if we're asking Apple / Google to keep more accounts open, we're also asking for more surveillance.

This may actually be the right tradeoff to make, but it is important to point out that there is a tradeoff here, and that no decision in this regard goes without consequences.

None of this prevents them from providing proper customer service that can resolve cases of false positives.

Why cant they give a task which is reasonable for a real customer, e.g. show up with ID in an apple store and lets us reserve $100 on your credit card to unlock an account which is under investigation immediately? This is not more surveillance - Apple already knows the real name of their customer.

charge 5$ for the ability to send your first iMessage. problem solved.

Or we could, you know, restructure our economy so that we don't have huge semi-monopolies anymore. I know, not going to happen, but one can dream.