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After decimating Twitter’s workforce, imperiling its infrastructure and emptying its advert coffers all inside his first month on the firm, it’s on to the following factor for Elon Musk.
The erratic billionaire picked a combat with Apple in a collection of tweets on Monday, bracing for a battle — or maybe simply one other volley of tweets — that may comfortably place the perpetually aggrieved Twitter proprietor because 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 motion towards the social app over adjustments underneath its new possession with out providing any proof of that. TechCrunch has reached out to Apple for clarification, however for now we don’t know if Apple actually contacted Twitter over content material moderation considerations or one thing else solely.
Twitter’s new proprietor additionally claims that Apple has pulled most of its promoting on the platform, which appears doable and even seemingly contemplating what number of different main advert consumers have finished the identical since Musk’s takeover, citing considerations about model security and content material moderation adjustments.
No matter is absolutely occurring right here, a couple of issues are true. For one, Twitter wants to remain within the App Retailer and to take action it must clear Apple’s low bar for content material moderation, which Reality Social and Parler — apps with far much less mature algorithmic content material moderation programs — have managed to do. Even with Musk’s threatened coverage adjustments and his deep cuts to moderation groups, Twitter would seemingly nonetheless stay on Apple’s good aspect if these apps pulled it off.
It’s additionally true that Apple’s guidelines for what will get an app get kicked out of the App Retailer are obscure and arbitrarily enforced. Apple warns towards “content material that’s offensive, insensitive, upsetting, supposed to disgust, in exceptionally poor style, or simply plain creepy” which would appear to rule out a variety of social apps, pre-Musk Twitter included, if it actually got here right down to it.
On the identical time that Musk is portraying Apple as a censor, he’s additionally railing towards the charges the corporate fees apps that function in its ecosystem. Musk calls this a “secret 30% tax” however in actuality Apple’s lower is well-documented and much-discussed. Epic Video games and Apple went to court docket over Apple’s charges in 2020, with Epic arguing that the iPhone maker wields monopoly energy within the software program market.
Whether or not intentional or not, Musk reigniting the App Retailer antitrust battle is well timed. Epic’s ongoing combat with Apple is kicking off once more in appeals court docket and Congress may very well be poised for one more push to go the Open Markets Act, a bipartisan invoice that may crack open the App Retailer and “tear down coercive anticompetitive partitions within the app financial system,” based on its sponsors.
It’s additionally doable that Apple truly has cautioned Musk that reinstating hundreds of accounts banned for stuff like hate speech and harassment may nudge the app afoul of the App Retailer’s truly fairly lenient content material moderation necessities. In that case, Musk might place himself as a excessive profile champion of the anti-Apple crowd, becoming a member of Epic’s entire factor and making good with regulators who’re rightfully involved over Musk’s Twitter plans (or lack thereof).
However even then, Twitter wants Apple in each the quick and long run and Apple definitely doesn’t want Twitter. And preventing on one more entrance would stretch Musk’s consideration much more when he ought to most likely be centered on the fundamentals, like not bankrupting Twitter or operating his myriad different firms, say.
On the finish of the day, Musk, the world’s literal richest man and maker of luxurious vehicles and spaceships, usually appears to get pleasure from portraying himself as a scrappy upstart preventing towards bigger powers that be. If Musk needs to recreate that dynamic at Twitter, Apple is arguably one of many solely entities that may nonetheless make the vastly influential social media firm appear like the little man. Musk may be the Twitter boss now, however he is aware of that turning everybody towards the huge boss is an effective technique to keep the approval of the miscellaneous web devotees that affirm his present beliefs and vote in his deeply unscientific tweet polls, so perhaps it’s nearly that.
No matter impressed his anti-Apple tirade, waging a conflict on Apple might be a dropping combat. Nevertheless it’s a contemporary battle that diverts consideration from Musk’s embarrassing and seemingly infinite parade of catastrophes as he fumbles Twitter’s coverage, personnel and product alike, probably operating one of many world’s greatest social networks into the bottom within the course of.
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