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Apple and Elon Go to War: The Future of the Internet in the Balance

November 28, 2022  ·
  Jonas J. Campbell

Is Apple about to push Twitter off the App Store? The world’s richest man has gone from technocrat darling to elite-loathed free speech advocate.

 

Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has fueled speculation from the moment he bought his first shares in January of this year. Months later the purchase is complete, more than half of the company has been laid off, and Twitter discourse (good or bad) is as energetic as it has ever been.

The world is watching very closely as Elon Musk has managed to replace Donald Trump as the most trending topic for weeks. He’s caught the attention of every advertiser, celebrity, and government entity in the United States. Not all of that attention has been positive though as it appears that something is brewing between Apple and Twitter that’s not looking good.

About a week ago, tech giant Apple scrubbed their Twitter account completely. Their account still exists, but all of their tweets over years of posting have been deleted. https://twitter.com/Apple In addition, Apple executive Phil Schiller, head of their App Store, deleted his account. You might recognize Schiller as a staple of Apple Keynotes. He’s the one who said it was “courage” to remove the 3.5mm headphone jacks from phones.

In light of these disappearances from Twitter, questions started flying. Was Apple really abdicating its place on one of the largest social media networks in the world? Why would they do this? Is it because of Elon Musk and the changes he’s made to Twitter? Is this specifically because of Donald Trump’s infamous Twitter account being reinstated?

On Friday, conservative commentator Liz Wheeler tweeted Elon Musk asking him if he would launch his own line of smartphones if Google and Apple end up booting Twitter from the App Store. Never one to shy away from a fight, Elon responded “If there is no choice, I will make an alternative phone.”

 

Fast-forward to Monday, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk tweeted “Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?” This is not exactly the friendliest way to repair relations with the once-heroic tech giant, but then he replied to his own tweet tagging the account of Apple CEO Tim Cook.

 

Musk then unleashed a Twitter storm calling out Apple for their stances for censorship, their part in the 2020 Epic Games vs. Apple Court case fiasco, and the 30% cut of all App Store revenue that Apple takes from their developers. In classic Musk fashion, he did this with not only words, but memes and Twitter polls.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1597302404239659008

 

 

 

In the middle of all of that, Musk stated that Apple has threatened to withhold Twitter from the App Store, but will not provide a reason why.

 

For those keeping track at home, Elon’s first commercial success was at a little known company called PayPal, where he created technology-based payment alternatives, then NASA alternative SpaceX, which spawned global low-earth-orbit internet service provider Starlink, not to mention the much-lauded Tesla electric sportscar company, which has reportedly just completed testing on it’s first fully electric freight truck.

Elon Musk has a strong record of innovation when industries become complacent.

While Apple seems to have become one of those complacent companies in the years since Steve Jobs passed away, as far a sheer financial heft goes they are one of the few players on the board that could truly harm Elon Musk. Musk reportedly has a net worth of a PALTRY 270 billion USD, whereas the market capitalization of Apple is 2.29 TRILLION. If Apple decided to mobilize against Elon Musk, that could present lots of problems.

For starters, if Twitter is removed from the App Store, it would be a move to remove Twitter from existence. When Apple removed Parler from the App Store, Google followed suit very quickly and Amazon Web Services shut down their website entirely. It’s taken Parler years to recover and some would argue they have never truly did. Twitter is different from Parler though. Twitter at one point came pre-installed on iPhones. That’s quite a change in attitude.

Removing Twitter from the App Store is also a bet by Apple that millions of Twitter addicts will either forgo Twitter usage altogether or simply use the web-browser version of Twitter instead of switching over to an Android phone. It also risks an anti-trust lawsuit that Department of Justice could not ignore. In case you haven’t been following the news recently, they seem to have changed their tune on mega-mergers recently by denying Paramount’s sale of book giant Simon & Schuster to Penguin Random House.

They might also be betting that Elon Musk will take years to produce a phone up to his standards. While Liz Wheeler’s tweet suggests it would be easy, it might be difficult to pull users out of the high walls of Apples fabled “walled garden” of complete hardware and software integration. In my opinion, the most hilarious move would be Elon Musk using his army of coders to produce consumer-viable jailbreaking methods for iPhones, finally forcing an alternative App Store to the masses.

This situation is rapidly developing so keep following That Park Place for up to date analysis. Feel free to drop a comment down below.

Author: Jonas J. Campbell
Investigative reporter for That Park Place. Culture Noticer. More than a decade in Corporate Finance experience. SOCIAL MEDIA: X: http://x.com/JonasJCampbell YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ThatParkPlace EMAIL: Jcampbell@thatparkplace.com
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