Twitter Inc.’s new owner Elon Musk has publicly taken on Apple Inc. and its app store, setting the stage for a potential confrontation between the world’s richest man and the world’s most valuable brand, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Musk posted several tweets last week accusing Apple of blocking free speech and claiming that the tech giant had threatened to remove the Twitter app from the iPhone.
“This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead,” Musk posted.
Yoel Roth, the former head of trust and safety at Twitter, said that if the platform does not follow Apple or Google’s content guidelines, it could be “catastrophic” for the company.
Apple and its CEO, Tim Cook, hold significant leverage over Twitter, as Apple controls the availability of Twitter’s software on its app store.
Among Musk’s posts, he also called attention to the control Apple exercises over software distribution on its products.
Musk conducted a poll on Twitter, asking respondents whether “Apple should publish all censorship actions it has taken that affect its customers.”
Of the 2,228,444 votes cast, “Yes” received 84.7%, and “No” received 15.3% of the votes.
Musk also tweeted an August 2020 video from Epic Games, the maker of the online video game Fortnite, which has an estimated 350 to 400 million users worldwide. The video is a parody of Apple’s classic advertisement for the Macintosh computer from 1984.
In the original advertisement, set in George Orwell’s 1984, Apple portrayed itself as revolutionizing computing and bringing freedom to the future of technology from a controlling “Big Brother,” understood to be IBM.
In the parody, Apple is instead portrayed as the “Big Brother” that is exercising a monopoly and must be destroyed.
Text at the end explains that Epic had “defied the App Store Monopoly” and that “in retaliation” Apple had blocked Fortnite from a billion devices. The video ends with the hashtag #freefortnite.
“It just looks like Elon wants to pick a fight with Apple,” said Phillip Shoemaker, former senior director of Apple’s App Store Review team. “But I can’t imagine him winning this one.”
The problem for Apple is that Musk does not appear to be standing alone in this fight, as other tech leaders were quick to echo Musk’s concerns regarding Apple’s control: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and Facebook founder and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg also took shots at Apple.
Ek’s platform, a direct competitor with Apple Music, said Apple “gives itself every advantage while at the same time stifling innovation and hurting consumers.”
Zuckerberg called Apple’s restrictions a conflict of interest on Wednesday and said, “It is problematic for one company to be able to control what app experiences end up on a device.”
Alongside challenging Apple’s authority to decide what software can reach its more than 1 billion iPhone users, the latest dispute could draw attention to how speech is monitored on the internet more generally.
Apple, under Tim Cook, has removed apps from its store over content-moderation concerns and has blocked certain social media data-collection practices in the interest of user privacy.
Apple removed the social media app Parler over concerns it was not doing enough to moderate dangerous content following the events of January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol. Apple brought the app back to its store in May 2021 after Parler proposed updates and content moderation policies.
This dispute could put Apple under renewed scrutiny from lawmakers and regulators worldwide.
Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) and Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) have pushed for action on antitrust legislation that would ease Apple’s and Google’s control over their app markets.
“This is why we need to end the App Store duopoly before the end of this year. No one should have this kind of market power,” Buck tweeted.
Musk met with Apple’s Tim Cook on Wednesday and thanked Cook for showing him around the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, prompting hopes that an agreement may be in the works.
The Twitter CEO tweeted following the meeting that Tim Cook: “Among other things, we resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the App Store. Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.”
For now, there may be peace between Apple and Twitter, but it may be too late for Apple to escape antitrust legislation aimed at breaking its stranglehold on developers.
