Elon Musk says he met with Apple CEO Tim Prepare dinner after criticizing him

“Thanks @tim_cook for taking me round Apple’s stunning HQ,” Musk wrote in a tweet, together with a video of a giant pond, with two shadows standing within the foreground. 

The seemingly benign tweet capped off a number of much less nice missives from Musk, who repeatedly referred to as out Apple this week, and at instances Prepare dinner particularly, over claims that the tech large stopped promoting on Twitter, threatened to take away it from its app retailer, and overcharged firms. (Each Apple and Twitter didn’t instantly reply to Fortune’s request for remark.)

On Monday, Musk tweeted that Apple had reduce off most of its promoting on Twitter. Apple was the highest advertiser on Twitter within the first quarter of this yr, spending $48 million on advertisements, based on the The Washington Submit. Apple advertisements accounted for 4% of Twitter’s income that quarter.

“Do they hate free speech in America?” He wrote, including, “What’s occurring right here @tim_cook?”

Twitter has misplaced a number of main advertisers since Musk took over the corporate final month, together with Pfizer, Volkswagen, and Chipotle. Latest reporting from tech publication Platformer revealed that weekly advert bookings for the corporate are down practically 50%, and income in Europe, the Center East, and Africa is down 15%. 

However promoting is only one a part of Musk’s downside with Apple. He claimed in one other Monday tweet that the corporate “threatened to withhold” Twitter’s app from its app retailer, however “received’t inform us why.” 

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Advertisers and firms have been distancing themselves from Musk’s Twitter since he started implementing modifications on the firm earlier this month, largely in response to Musk’s resolution to chop many of the platform’s content material moderation staff and the ensuing rise of hate speech noticed on the positioning. 

Getting kicked out of the app retailer can be a serious blow to the social media platform, which is already enduring a interval of utmost tumult. Musk has up to now laid off round 50% of Twitter’s employees in an effort to chop prices, with a whole bunch resigning in current weeks as the brand new CEO brings his trademark “hardcore” work ethic and administration type to the corporate. 

Musk went on to denounce Apple’s “secret 30% tax on all the things” in a separate tweet, referring to the proportion of income that the corporate takes from app retailer gross sales. Musk might have additionally delayed relaunching the platform’s Twitter Blue subscription service in order that the characteristic might be re-tooled as an in-app buy, and keep away from Apple’s charge. 

The charge Apple receives from app downloads is well-known amongst tech firms, with Spotify and Fb guardian Meta having criticized Apple for the proportion reduce prior to now.

Epic Video games, the writer of in style videogame Fortnite, even took Apple to courtroom final yr over the embedded charge. Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney has criticized Apple’s mannequin as a “monopoly” and just lately sided with Musk on the problems between Apple and Twitter.

“Apple is a menace to freedom worldwide,” Sweeney wrote on Twitter this week. “They keep an unlawful monopoly on app distribution, they use it to regulate American discourse, they usually’re endangering protesters in China by storing delicate buyer information in a state-owned information heart.”

Billing startup Paddle additionally took Apple to courtroom final yr over its cost system, and its CEO Christian Owens just lately welcomed Musk as an ally of their case. “It factors to how egregious the 30% charge is. I’m glad Elon is within the struggle,” Owens instructed Insider this week.

A pondside assembly at Apple HQ will doubtless not be sufficient for Musk to just accept Apple’s obtain charge, though Owens and different CEOs dissatisfied with Apple would possibly quickly discover him to not be probably the most dependable ally.

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