Claiming Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from the App Store, Elon Musk goes on the warpath and says he'll create his own phone if they do

[Delicieuxz]

While saying that Apple has so far refused to tell him why, Elon Musk claims that Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from Apple's App Store, and has fired off a barrage of attacks against Apple, including those below and others. He's tied Apple's alleged threat to Apple opposing the free speech goals Elon aims to implement on Twitter, which are to include the general amnesty of previously-banned accounts, except those banned for things that are illegal.

 

 

 

 

But Elon isn't backing-down on his plans. He instead said that he'll make his own phone if Apple or Google remove Twitter from their stores, and he also announced he's going to reveal how "free speech suppression" on Twitter was being conducted before he bought the platform.

Whatever's going on, I think it's good that it's being thrown out into the open by Elon. Whatever will make the public more aware of the shenanigans that are regularly being done by tech companies to manipulate them is good.

[Distinctly Average]

The advertisers have the right to choose where they spend their advertising money. If Apple or any of the others that have been distancing themselves from Twitter want to be careful, then so be it. If both Apple and Google have suggested that allowing hate speech on any app that is being sold through their stores is against the rules, then fair play them. I have a feeling many don’t actually understand what freedom of speech actually is. Twitter is already filled with hatred that any relaxation of the current rules may even fall foul of many countries laws, including the EU and the UK. Had EM vowed to clean up Twitter, stop the nutters from abusive speech and harm then surely advertisers would remain or increased their spend.

[Dracarris]

[Lurick]

15 minutes ago, Distinctly Average said:

The advertisers have the right to choose where that spend their advertising money. If Apple or any of the others that have been distancing themselves from Twitter want to be careful them so be it. If both Apple and Google have suggested that allowing hate speech on any app that is being sold through their stores is against the rules then fair play them. If have a feeling many don’t actually understand what freedom of speech actually is. Twitter is already filled with hatred that any relaxation of the current rules may even fall foul of many countries laws, including the EU and the UK. Had EM vowed to clean up Twitter, stop the nutters from abusive speech and harm then surely advertisers would remain or increased their spend.

It's almost like the US is a free-ish market or does that only apply when Elon blesses you with approval? I forget how this hellscape works at times

/s

 

I 100% agree, companies are free to choose where they spend their advertisement money, just another day of Elon trying to be in the news cycle for attention =/

[Zando_]

On 11/28/2022 at 4:02 PM, Delicieuxz said:

Whatever will make the public more aware of the shenanigans that are regularly being done by tech companies to manipulate them is good.

... It's not secret, pretty sure it's stated in the documents you're supposed to read before putting apps on the Apple App Store or Google Play Store. It's also not a tax, it's a cut, I think Elon/his ilk specifically use tax to try and invoke the "taxes are theft" crowd. It's a 30% cut of revenue that pays for all the hosting, managing payment options, etc that both app stores do. Steam also 30%, Epic's store takes 12% but works with less payment options than Steam, and IIRC overall they do less for devs that Steam does as well (which is good or bad, depending on what the dev wants). Same as how AWS charges fees to use their servers, that sort of thing. App stores usually do the "cut of revenue" method because that's the least discouraging to new developers (as there is little upfront cost). Same as how Epic's Unreal Engine is completely free for commercial purposes until you start pulling $1,000,000 or more in revenue. Makes it easier on them because they don't have to work as closely with every hobby dev ever, only ones that will be profitable for them, and small devs can get into making games with way less overhead. 

 

All this stuff is widely known by anyone who has taken a gander at that side of the industry, and can become well known by you if you have access to google and about 15 minutes of time (I forgot the exact numbers here a few times so I just googled them). It isn't some sneaky shenanigans big corps are pulling.

 

Any manipulation is driven by profit motive, certain types of behavior scare away investors/advertisers (and thus the money), as Elon is learning the hard way with Twitter, so unsurprising that Apple may want to drop such a controversial app, especially as it doesn't drive a ton of revenue through their store so it is little loss to them. They also have basically no Twitter presence, a couple Execs do normal old executive guy tweets every now and then, but their main account is just parked there to hold the @ so trolls can't grab it. So it's not like they'll lose any brand reach or anything by burning ties with Twitter/Elon. 

 

so uh TL:DR this is just normal, how these storefronts operate, there is good reason they operate this way, there is good reason they aren't feeling great about Twitter, Elon is just throwing his usual fit over X corporation not bending to his will. 

 

EDIT Dec 7 2022: btw Epic's cut goes right back to 25% if you make them handle transaction costs instead of doing it yourself, so it appears that's where most of the expense for app stores is. 

 

 

 

[Fasterthannothing]

Fantastic about time we have competition in the mobile/app store segment. Bring on the Tesla phone 

[Zando_]

Just now, Fasterthannothing said:

Fantastic about time we have competition in the mobile/app store segment. Bring on the Tesla phone 

Given the current dumpster fire that is Twitter, do you think Elon is capable of leading a company to create a new, competitive mobile OS after both Microsoft (massive OS corp) and Canonical (one of the large Linux OS corps) canned their mobile OSes due to difficulty/cost + inability to compete with Android and iOS? 

 

Because unless they make a new OS, they'll just be another android OEM, and we already have tons of competition in the Android OEM space. If they mean to tweak an OS to de-google Android, that has already been done by the likes of GrapheneOS. I guess they could be competition in that specific niche? But it's very hard to profit off of that. 

[spartaman64]

not secret at all that was what the epic games vs apple lawsuit is about. but yeah im actually on elon's side on this one lol

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, Distinctly Average said:

If Apple or any of the others that have been distancing themselves from Twitter want to be careful them so be it.

Well in Apple's case I'd argue that they shouldn't be allowed to just kick an App off the store.  At least on Android there is ways to install without using the PlayStore.

 

It's very much akin to ISP's at this point, and the fact that they should have net neutrality.  I do believe given the amount of devices, and almost a need to have Apps on phones for platforms such as Twitter, Apple should not be capable of shutting them down just because they don't like the values Twitter is portraying.

 

At this point in time Google and Apple should be considered gatekeepers; but Apple more so.

 

Even if they base it off of the "moderation" claims, if Musk is to be believed in terms of how Twitter use to judge hate speech, the amount of hate speech has stayed roughly the same.  Then even on top of that, why didn't Apple remove Twitter when there was the issue of pedophilia on Twitter (something that Twitter willfully ignored for so long).

 

The biggest thing that Twitter is doing that threatens Apple at the moment is the charge of $8, where Musk isn't willing to give up 30% of the subscription fee to Apple.  It seems that Apple is merely moving towards the avoidance of another lawsuit involving IAP.

 

  

1 hour ago, Distinctly Average said:

Had EM vowed to clean up Twitter, stop the nutters from abusive speech and harm then surely advertisers would remain or increased their spend.

Uhm, when it comes to abusive speech (violence against a person) he has said those people would be suspended.  He's already started fixing the pedophilia issue that Twitter had.  At this point brands want to abandon because it's the cool thing to do.

[NF-A12x25]

damn i sure fucking hope they do kick it off LMAO maybe it’ll finally kick off the “real” death of Twitter

[Blademaster91]

This seems like another case of companies over reaching as a platform, twitter has been toxic for years but the advertisers and media want to leave and blame it on Elon. I don't like Elon either but advertisers and companies getting in a panic is just silly.

[Blademaster91]

1 hour ago, Zando_ said:

Given the current dumpster fire that is Twitter, do you think Elon is capable of leading a company to create a new, competitive mobile OS after both Microsoft (massive OS corp) and Canonical (one of the large Linux OS corps) canned their mobile OSes due to difficulty/cost + inability to compete with Android and iOS? 

 

Because unless they make a new OS, they'll just be another android OEM, and we already have tons of competition in the Android OEM space. If they mean to tweak an OS to de-google Android, that has already been done by the likes of GrapheneOS. I guess they could be competition in that specific niche? But it's very hard to profit off of that.

Twitter has been a dumpster fire for a while and advertisers have been fine with it until Elon bought the platform, its simply cool to hate on it now if some company doesn't go along with hating on twitter people are going to rage over it.

But if Elon can hire good developers to put out a competitive Android phone, because all we have anymore for serious competition is Samsung and Google, then I'd be fine with another Android OEM. Also because Samsung has been going to sh*t by copying Apple with form over function and removing useful features.

[Distinctly Average]

11 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Well in Apple's case I'd argue that they shouldn't be allowed to just kick an App off the store.  At least on Android there is ways to install without using the PlayStore.

The App is one thing, but it would still be accessible fiat the browser. We also only have EMs word for this. What has probably been said is Twitter need to continue to meet the App Store rules. This may be veiled threat, maybe not. EM doesn’t appear to like to be told anything and probably threw his toys from the cot when he heard this.

11 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

It's very much akin to ISP's at this point, and the fact that they should have net neutrality.  I do believe given the amount of devices, and almost a need to have Apps on phones for platforms such as Twitter, Apple should not be capable of shutting them down just because they don't like the values Twitter is portraying.

 

Apple would not be shutting them down, just not associating publicly with them. Far smaller platforms have faced this and returned.

11 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

At this point in time Google and Apple should be considered gatekeepers; but Apple more so.

 

Even if they base it off of the "moderation" claims, if Musk is to be believed in terms of how Twitter use to judge hate speech, the amount of hate speech has stayed roughly the same.  Then even on top of that, why didn't Apple remove Twitter when there was the issue of pedophilia on Twitter (something that Twitter willfully ignored for so long).

 

There have been many times many apps sailed close to the wind. Twitter did not actively promote pedophilia and we’re doing things to clamp down, just not fast enough. They were not ignoring it. Problem is we have now a situation where one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet has a skeleton staff and it is showing. Many advertisers are holding back and that really is what is going on here. If this had not been Apple then there would be less negativity over their actions. I see very few lambasting VW for holding back, despite the damage their lies did re the diesel scandal. We could also mention the failures of many of the other advertisers who previously spent many hundreds of millions on Twitter advertising, but we haven’t. People like to jump on Apple whether their actions are right or wrong.

11 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

The biggest thing that Twitter is doing that threatens Apple at the moment is the charge of $8, where Musk isn't willing to give up 30% of the subscription fee to Apple.  It seems that Apple is merely moving towards the avoidance of another lawsuit involving IAP.

 

  

Uhm, when it comes to abusive speech (violence against a person) he has said those people would be suspended.  He's already started fixing the pedophilia issue that Twitter had.  At this point brands want to abandon because it's the cool thing to do.

He says a lot, but with very few staff very little has changed. Big companies are wary, and rightly so. Apple is just one of many.

[Zando_]

3 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

Twitter has been a dumpster fire for a while and advertisers have been fine with it until Elon bought the platform, its simply cool to hate on it now if some company doesn't go along with hating on twitter people are going to rage over it.

Not a dumpster fire that threatened their profits. Basically everything @Distinctly Averagesaid, anything I'd say would just be a poorer paraphrase of that.

8 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

But if Elon can hire good developers to put out a competitive Android phone, because all we have anymore for serious competition is Samsung and Google, then I'd be fine with another Android OEM. Also because Samsung has been going to sh*t by copying Apple with form over function and removing useful features.

That is a fair point. I just don't like the Tesla fanatic "this is the thingiest thing ever!!!!" that any already-done-better idea Elon shits out is greeted with. It'd just be another funky Android OEM in a sea of funky Android OEMs. Sony already makes weird niche phones, RED tried their hand at it, stuff like the Pinephone and other repair/user-control oriented devices, etc. I'm not sure what Elon could do that would raise a company to anywhere near the level of Apple, Google, or Samsung fast enough to somehow save Twitter? Let alone the overseas OEMs that are absolutely massive.

[wanderingfool2]

9 minutes ago, Distinctly Average said:

Apple would not be shutting them down, just not associating publicly with them. Far smaller platforms have faced this and returned.

When you are a company the size of Apple that controls access to half of the population in a country it starts to tip into the area of the gatekeeper and having to remain neutral.

 

That's the whole debate really, should Apple be allowed to demand 30% and if companies makes waves they are booted from the platform (Apple has had a history of that).

 

11 minutes ago, Distinctly Average said:

He says a lot, but with very few staff very little has changed. Big companies are wary, and rightly so. Apple is just one of many.

Changes will take time, but the fact is it only took a few weeks to make a major push on the problematic hashtag front.  Things have changed quite a bit, and by the old metrics Twitter measured by it's actually doing the same. (except more mDAU's based on Twitters old calculation).

 

13 minutes ago, Distinctly Average said:

Twitter did not actively promote pedophilia and we’re doing things to clamp down, just not fast enough. They were not ignoring it. Problem is we have now a situation where one of the biggest social media platforms on the planet has a skeleton staff and it is showing

Showing how?  Seriously, Twitter had problems prior...

 

Also, while they didn't actively promote it, they did nothing to really fix it.  The person who was in charge of moving the report to the front page had take close to a year to do so.  They literally didn't remove some stuff until homeland security contacted them (after the police and the child who was the victim couldn't get Twitter to remove it).  So yea, Twitter was terrible at it before and they reached a point where it was utterly unacceptable.

[Distinctly Average]

14 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

When you are a company the size of Apple that controls access to half of the population in a country it starts to tip into the area of the gatekeeper and having to remain neutral.

 

That's the whole debate really, should Apple be allowed to demand 30% and if companies makes waves they are booted from the platform (Apple has had a history of that).

Well, it is 15%-30% and the big players are almost certainly at the 15% level. Should any store that has overheads not be allowed to make a profit? Should Apple basically be philanthropists and make the app store free? That is a sure fire route to it closing down. Every profit making shop on the planet has expenses, and charges. They need to make a profit to survive. Apple do far more than survive, but the basic premise remains the same. 

14 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

 

Changes will take time, but the fact is it only took a few weeks to make a major push on the problematic hashtag front.  Things have changed quite a bit, and by the old metrics Twitter measured by it's actually doing the same. (except more mDAU's based on Twitters old calculation).

 

Showing how?  Seriously, Twitter had problems prior...

 

Also, while they didn't actively promote it, they did nothing to really fix it.  The person who was in charge of moving the report to the front page had take close to a year to do so.  They literally didn't remove some stuff until homeland security contacted them (after the police and the child who was the victim couldn't get Twitter to remove it).  So yea, Twitter was terrible at it before and they reached a point where it was utterly unacceptable.

I agree, it should never have taken so long. That is an individual case and one that both companies and governments were putting pressure on. The issues were deeper, but were improving and a sense of direction was visible. Currently nobody outside EM and a small group of insiders know what is going on, and that is why Advertisers are understandably cautious. From Nike to VAG to Google, all are concerned. this is playing out very publicly and I think we should not be concentrating on Apple, but more the current state of Twitter and the direction it is taking. The EU Digital Services Act is probably more of a worry to Twitter.

 

Twitter affects so many, it has been daily news for years now and often used and abused by lazy reporters. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. My guess is by January things will be business as usual where advertisers are concerned and EM will have found something else to throw himself into the daily news. At that he really is a genius. 

[Fasterthannothing]

2 hours ago, Zando_ said:

Given the current dumpster fire that is Twitter, do you think Elon is capable of leading a company to create a new, competitive mobile OS after both Microsoft (massive OS corp) and Canonical (one of the large Linux OS corps) canned their mobile OSes due to difficulty/cost + inability to compete with Android and iOS? 

 

Because unless they make a new OS, they'll just be another android OEM, and we already have tons of competition in the Android OEM space. If they mean to tweak an OS to de-google Android, that has already been done by the likes of GrapheneOS. I guess they could be competition in that specific niche? But it's very hard to profit off of that. 

You know custom Linux OS phones exist right? Like that's the entire problem is people keep thinking only android and Apple exist in a bubble. It's absurd these companies have such a grip on people's purchasing power.

[Zando_]

3 minutes ago, Fasterthannothing said:

You know custom Linux OS phones exist right?

... uh, from the very post of mine that you quoted:

2 hours ago, Zando_ said:

Canonical (one of the large Linux OS corps)

No, I've never heard of non-Android Linux phones, had no idea something like Ubuntu Mobile/Touch would have been made by a larger Linux corp like Canonical, then canned, and now kept on life support by the community much like other niche OSes.

[Arika]

oh no.............people might have to use the website version instead.......

[hishnash]

2 hours ago, Fasterthannothing said:

You know custom Linux OS phones exist right? Like that's the entire problem is people keep thinking only android and Apple exist in a bubble. It's absurd these companies have such a grip on people's purchasing power.

For sure you can make a phone os from anything. The issue is not building the OS or the main system apps the issue is building an OS that somehow attracts developers to build apps so that users can even consider buying the phone. (see windows phone). 

 

These days the only viable option would be an android fork as this way many apps would `just work` (unless they depend on google services of cource... that is more than you might think.. .thinks like embedded a map etc). 

 

 

And given Elon's flip flop history and twitters poor develop support history even with the promise of big payouts very few devs would dare to take the plunge as they would (rightfully) expect the rug to be pulled out from under them just before the app was ready to ship wasting months and months of work. 

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

While saying that Apple has so far refused to tell him why, Elon Musk claims that Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from Apple's App Store, and has fired off a barrage of attacks against Apple, including those below and others. He's tied Apple's alleged threat to it having an opposition against the free speech goals Elon aims to implement on Twitter, which are to include the general amnesty of previously-banned accounts, except those banned for things that are illegal.

 

Oh, I know why. Other apps "work around" censorship policies by having a button in the DESKTOP app or BROWSER to "allow app version to show everything", but you're not allowed to have an app break Apple's ToS, which includes any nudity-what-so-ever, so no butt or cleavage cracks. It's far more likely Apple was like "let's wait this out"

 

Or the Twitter Blue debacle so far resulted in a lot of chargebacks. Which is likely, but probably not it.

 

 

5 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

But Elon isn't backing-down on his plans. He instead said that he'll make his own phone if Apple or Google remove Twitter from their stores, and he also announced he's going to reveal how "free speech suppression" on Twitter was being conducted before he bought

the platform

Please, build your own POS Android-based phone, that's all I expect "your phone" will be. No innovation, only "copy the market leader"

 

Also I doubt there's any "free speech suppression" going on that anyone gives a care about except by governments. The platform deciding to deplatform Daesh is a good thing. The platform deciding to deplatform protests, a bad thing. Nobody cares about the crybaby billionaires, and fundamentally there are more "eat-the-rich" people on twitter than there are rich people stupid enough to brag about their wealth.

 

 

5 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

Whatever's going on, I think it's good that it's being thrown out into the open by Elon. Whatever will make the public more aware of the shenanigans that are regularly being done by tech companies to manipulate them is good.

I'm more interested in knowing the biases of algorithms than the inner workings of them. Is twitter flagging everything 'skin color' as nudity, is it flagging chicken nuggets and labradoodle's as nudity? Is it flagging loafs of bread and corgi's as nudity? It's interesting to know what it's doing, and how machine-learning can be improved to not be so stupid, but the inner workings of machine learning, especially when it comes to censorship and copyright enforcement, we already know to be very stupid, because of biases in the training.

 

Less anyone forget, this was already a problem

https://www.wired.com/story/photo-algorithms-id-white-men-fineblack-women-not-so-much/

 

There's also literately thousands of pages complaining about ContentID or Copyright strikes for humming or singing music, without the commercial audio recording or even a crappy midi. ContentID and similar copyright-related misuse is a great example of where an existing system intended to prevent piracy, prevents fair use, prevents criticism of media, and is used to censor criticism of said media.

 

[hishnash]

3 hours ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Then even on top of that, why didn't Apple remove Twitter when there was the issue of pedophilia on Twitter (something that Twitter willfully ignored for so long).

Apparently there is a long history of apple rejecting twitter updates when things are found during review and then someone high up in twitter asking kindly to be given another chance.  The fear that Apple will just pull the app comes from the fact that twitter is no longer saying `Oh my bad.. let me fix that quick' and rolling out a quick hacky patch just to hide a little bit of content found by a review before asking for a review.

But instead is responding to app review `we do not moderate content`.   As a developer I know very well that you can get away with a lot if you move a little when they ask (not all the way). But if you stone wall they will stone wall back. 

[hishnash]

8 minutes ago, Kisai said:

but you're not allowed to have an app break Apple's ToS, which includes any nudity-what-so-ever, so no butt or cleavage cracks. It's far more likely Apple was like "let's wait this out"

So the main issue is how users get to the content. For example if you have an app were the user must look for nudity (and this is not the main feature of the app) then Apple do not have an issue. (eg reddit app start out by default blocking NSFW filters but has a setting to turn these off.. however it still prompts before you enter a NSFW subredit).   Another example of an app that will have nudity is a streaming service like Netflix or HBOmax. 

Same with a browser, if when you first opened the browser it showed NSFW as a suggested website to visit it would be rejected but if you need to go look for it then its not rejected.

With twitter however you can just sign in (as App Store review will do using an account provided by Twitter ... devs must provide account login details to app for review). And you might see NSFW content or other hate speech etc right there as soon as you open the app.  That is what will get your app review rejected.  If twitter did a good job of suppressing the content such that the only way to see it was like the reddit app were you need to turn on a setting and then go to something other than the main feed app review would not have an issue.  
 

[RVRY]

Apple simultaneously allows Truth Social on their appstore: which is arguably so much worse than Twitter...

[TetraSky]

Man, this has been such a shitshow and I'm here for it.

 

It's nice that not even Elon's fu money can make Apple change their authoritarian grip on what can and cannot go on their appstore.

 

Also:

Spoiler

I swear I've heard Luke say something similar to this on the WANshow before.