Roughly a month after his takeover of the company, the new CEO of Twitter, Elon Musk, continues to claim news headlines, this time by starting a war with Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) on his newly purchased social media platform. On Monday, November 28, the billionaire shot off a series of tweets accusing Apple of acting against his newly acquired company.
"Apple has stopped advertising on Twitter," Musk tweeted. "Do they hate free speech in America?"
20 minutes later in a follow-up tweet, Musk called out Apple CEO Tim Cook directly, asking, "What's going on here @tim_cook".
Around a half an hour after, Musk posted on Twitter again, this time accusing Apple of threatening to remove the social media app from its App Store without an explanation. He went on to tweet about Apple's policy of taking a 30% cut of all sales processed through its app store, retweeting posts accusing the company of operating a monopoly.
Musk's criticism of the App Store is a sentiment shared by many app developers, as well as countless regulators and lawmakers across the world. Apple's store serves as a funnel for billions of downloads every year, giving it control over how the app market operates.
Thanks to its tight control on payments made on its devices, Apple brings in roughly $22 billion in developer fees every year, according to the market research firm Sensor Tower. Along with its high fees, Apple has also taken steps to enhance user privacy on its apps, making user-targeted advertising more difficult. This in turn makes it more difficult for developers to attract advertisers to their apps.
Apple has also worked to improve user safety on apps offered through its store. After the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, the tech company took steps to remove platforms where calls for violence are allowed to fester, starting with the social platform Parler. The App Store now requires that apps offer a "safe experience" for users.
Many Twitter users in the replies to Musk's tweets said that the billionaire's recent removal of Twitter's moderation team and the rapid increase in hate speech on the platform might be why Apple is threatening to stop distributing the app.
"Who else has Apple censored," Musk tweeted to his roughly 120 million followers.
It's worth noting that there is no proof that Apple has made any moves against Twitter or its new CEO. In an interview with CBS, Tim Cook said that Apple has no plans to stop distributing Twitter on its store. Cook said that he is "counting on them to continue" to moderate hate speech on Twitter.
Three days prior to his accusations against Apple, Musk responded to a tweet suggesting that he should make his own smartphone if Google (NASDAQ: GOOGL) and Apple kick Twitter off their stores.
"I certainly hope it does not come to that," Musk replied, "but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone."
While Musk and his supporters might be confident in Twitter's ongoing relevance, others aren't so sure. Apps in competition with Twitter have reported a massive surge in sign-ups as Twitter users jump ship, and Musk still hasn't found a way to dig Twitter out of the financial hole he put it in.
Despite prior pledges not to reinstate suspended accounts without a moderation council in place, Musk also recently announced that the company would be granting "amnesty" to users who hadn't "broken the law or engaged in egregious spam".