(PM.) Elon Musk shared a photo of the Apple campus on Wednesday, thanking Apple CEO Tim Cook for a tour of the tech giant’s headquarters. Musk recently said he would “go to war” with Apple over their developer tax.
This meeting comes after Apple threatened to remove the Twitter app from their App Store and Elon Musk threatened to work around the App Store’s 30 percent cut by only offering Twitter outside of said App Store. That 30 percent would substantially eat into any profits Musk hopes to make by offering Twitter blue verification for $8 per month.
The two tech CEO’s have been in a somewhat public battle in recent days after Musk revealed that Apple and Google were threatening to pull the app from the App Store over content moderation concerns. While this would be a major blow to Twitter, it also encouraged Musk to say that, were the app removed from the store, he would create his own brand of smartphones to rival iPhone, on which the Twitter app would then be offered.
Apple had also nearly stopped all advertising on the Twitter platform, leading Musk to ask “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America? What’s going on here [Tim Cook]?”
Apparently, Cook was ready to answer some questions on Wednesday when the two men toured the campus and likely engaged in conversation about their two companies.
Apple and Google’s attestation that they were considering removing Twitter from their offerings comes after an activist Washington Post journalist demanded that they pull the app, claiming that the LGBTQ community and other “marginalized communities” stand to suffer the most harm from his free speech plans for the platform.
Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022
is Apple threatening Twitter’s presence in the App Store or otherwise making moderation demands?
— Jake Kastrenakes (@jake_k) November 28, 2022
Following this, Musk shared a tweet from blockchain-based file sharing and payment network LBRY, which said, “During Covid, Apple demanded our apps filter some search terms from being returned. If we did not filter the terms, our apps would not be allowed in the store. Apple may make good products, but they have been opposed to free speech for some time.”
“Who else has Apple censored?” Musk wrote.
