Apple account locked - seemingly widespread issue?

According to various posts, Apple may permanently lock accounts for various reasons (very broadly outlined in section VII-B of Legal - iCloud - Apple ). If none of the above apply to you, that may be the case here. If it isn’t apparent, contact Apple and ask if that is the situation, but don’t expect them to tell you why. You, or somebody who has managed to get access to your account, are likely doing something Apple is detecting as account misuse. You will have to see if your activities meet any of Apple's conditions in the support article and then stop doing things the way you have been.

Given the potentially uncontrollable and transient nature of an account, personally I do nothing of true value with my account. Mostly post to the forums here and use it to to transfer photos from my iPhone to my desktop computer since my setup does not permit direct syncing.

Is it locked for security reasons or inactive? If it is locked for security reasons you'll need to reset your password

if it is inactive, getting on the phone with apple support is the only thing you can do

All I know about this is what Apple says in its documentation and what people say here (which I always have to take with a grain of salt until I see a few dozen posts over the space of several years that I can be sure it isn't just some conspiracy theory). If the reality is that Apple may lock an account (which hasn't happened to me ever in the 20+ years I have had one) then the only thing is for you to see what you may have been doing to trigger this. Rightly or wrongly Apple decided your account was being misused and they do not enter into discussions about closing accounts. You may have to take more of a defensive driver approach instead of just thinking that driving according to the road laws will prevent anything from happening. You have spoken with Apple so you know what they say about it. All that Apple otherwise says about it is in the link I provided. The people on this forum are users like yourself so there is nothing we can do about it, sorry. I am just being pragmatic.

This is a technical support forum, and since this is more of a policy topic, Apple may take a dim view of it being continued. Other than contacting Apple as you have obviously done, there is nothing we can advise.

About your initial statement about seeing this issue, I see it daily here. It is nothing new.