What is the green moving light I see when I take pictures of the moon

Personally, lens flare can make a photo look incredible. If it's a smeary mess, however, that could ruin the photo. A small dot is not an issue at all for most people. You can also edit out the lens flare if it really matters that much, using programs like Adobe Photoshop. For just taking an amateur photo of the moon, it shouldn't be much of a problem.

Also, all phones have this issue, just in differing degrees. The larger the sensor and lens, the higher the risk of lens flare in general. The way the lenses are created make all the difference; how many elements, the transparency of them, whether there's any filters inside the lens array, and so on. You can't complain about something that is literally impossible to fix and has been a staple in photography almost since day one.

If you hate your iPhone so much, move to Android. Nobody's stopping you and quite frankly nobody cares. It's one person, Apple isn't going to release a public statement aimed at you, begging you to climb back over into their walled garden. Quite frankly, billions of people use iPhones and love them; hate them or not, they're clearly doing something right.

Why was this lens flare not present on earlier iPhones?

This is not an acceptable answer. This was not a problem in older models, so why now? My pictures are ruined by the green/orange dot/squiggle! The iPhone 11 camera was supposed to be great, but these ‘dots’ render the camera useless. The angle of the shot makes no difference, and come on, are you saying you cannot take decent pictures if there is a ‘light source’? Pathetic. Totally disappointed and will be sure to warn other prospective buyers.. my husband’s new Samsung camera is incredible.

In most cases the green spot will show up when taking a photo with a strong source of light in the background. This problem is due to the light coming in at a specific angle and reflecting off the surface inside the camera or the lens cover.

Whether you like the answer or not, he is correct. It's called lens flare.

What is lens flare?

https://photographylife.com/what-is-ghosting-and-flare#:~:text=Lens%20flare%20occurs%20when%20a,being%20present%20in%20the%20image.

Every new iPhone (except for "recycled" designs like the iPhone SE 2nd gen, which is just an iPhone 8 with a newer CPU) has a different setup for the lenses; which in turn causes the lens flare issue. The way the light refracts through these lenses is what makes all iPhones react differently when direct sunlight hits the lens.

I hope this helps!

Lenses have a coating applied to them to reduce the reflections. It's hard to see on the tiny lens on the phone but if you look at a regular camera, the reflection off the lens has a reddish or greenish tint to it. That's the coating they use to reduce flare.

Perhaps Apple changed the coating type and it doesn't reduce the flare as much.