After decimating Twitter’s workforce, imperiling its infrastructure and emptying its ad coffers all inside his first month on the agency, it’s on to the following issue for Elon Musk.
The erratic billionaire picked a fight with Apple in a sequence of tweets on Monday, bracing for a battle — or possibly merely one different volley of tweets — that may comfortably place the perpetually aggrieved Twitter proprietor as a result of the David to Apple’s Goliath.
Musk is now claiming that Apple threatened to “withhold” Twitter from the App Retailer, implying that the iPhone maker may take movement in direction of the social app over changes beneath its new possession with out offering any proof. has reached out to Apple for clarification, nevertheless for now we don’t know if Apple truly contacted Twitter over content material materials moderation points or one factor else solely.
Twitter’s new proprietor moreover claims that Apple has pulled most of its selling on the platform, which seems doable and even potential considering what variety of totally different foremost advert patrons have carried out the equivalent since Musk’s takeover, citing points about mannequin safety and content material materials moderation changes.
Regardless of is de facto occurring proper right here, various points are true. For one, Twitter needs to stay throughout the App Retailer and to take motion it should clear Apple’s low bar for content material materials moderation, which Actuality Social and Parler — apps with far a lot much less mature algorithmic content material materials moderation strategies — have managed to do. Even with Musk’s threatened protection changes and his deep cuts to moderation teams, Twitter would potential nonetheless keep on Apple’s good aspect if these apps pulled it off.
It’s moreover true that Apple’s pointers for what’s going to get an app get kicked out of the App Retailer are imprecise and arbitrarily enforced. Apple warns against “content material materials that’s offensive, insensitive, upsetting, purported to disgust, in exceptionally poor type, or just plain creepy,” which would seem to rule out a wide range of social apps, pre-Musk Twitter included, if it truly received right here proper all the way down to it.
On the same time that Musk is portraying Apple as a censor, he’s moreover railing in direction of the fees the company prices apps that perform in its ecosystem. Musk calls this a “secret 30% tax” nevertheless in truth Apple’s cut back is well-documented and much talked about. Epic Video video games and Apple went to courtroom over Apple’s prices in 2020, with Epic arguing that the iPhone maker wields monopoly vitality throughout the software program program market.
Whether or not or not intentional or not, Musk reigniting the App Retailer antitrust battle is properly timed. Epic’s ongoing fight with Apple is kicking off again in appeals court and Congress might presumably be poised for another push to maneuver the Open Markets Act, a bipartisan bill that may crack open the App Retailer and “tear down coercive anticompetitive partitions throughout the app financial system,” according to its sponsors.
It’s moreover doable that Apple actually has cautioned Musk that reinstating thousands of accounts banned for stuff like hate speech and harassment may nudge the app afoul of the App Retailer’s actually pretty lenient content material materials moderation requirements. In that case, Musk may place himself as a high-profile champion of the anti-Apple crowd, changing into a member of Epic’s full issue and making good with regulators who’re rightfully concerned over Musk’s Twitter plans (or lack thereof).
Nonetheless even then, Twitter needs Apple in every the short- and long-term and Apple undoubtedly doesn’t need Twitter. And stopping on but yet one more entrance would stretch Musk’s consideration rather more when he must most probably be centered on the basics, like working his myriad totally different companies or, say, not bankrupting Twitter. You could be mad that Apple takes 30% of what you make on the iPhone, nevertheless 30% of zero continues to be zero.
On the end of the day, Musk, the world’s richest man and maker of luxurious vehicles and spaceships, often seems to benefit from portraying himself as a scrappy upstart stopping in direction of larger powers that be. If Musk wishes to re-create that dynamic at Twitter, Apple is arguably one in every of many solely entities which will nonetheless make the vastly influential social media agency seem just like the little man. Musk will be the Twitter boss now, nevertheless he’s conscious of that turning all people in direction of the large boss is an environment friendly approach to protect the approval of the miscellaneous internet devotees who affirm his present beliefs and vote in his deeply unscientific tweet polls, so presumably it’s practically that.
Regardless of impressed his anti-Apple tirade, waging a battle on Apple is perhaps a dropping fight. Nonetheless it’s a latest battle that diverts consideration from Musk’s embarrassing and seemingly numerous parade of catastrophes as he fumbles Twitter’s protection, personnel and product alike, presumably working one in every of many world’s biggest social networks into the underside throughout the course of.
