Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk has criticized Apple for its strict rules about what can be seen in the App Store. He also accused the iPhone maker of threatening to take down the micro-blogging platform.
Billionaire Elon Musk is the latest entrant in the list of critics attacking the 30% fee charged by Apple on purchases made through its App Store.
Elon Musk posted a series of tweets, one of which featured a meme showing a car with his first name on it turning into the “Go to War,” highway exit rather than the one leading to the “Pay 30%.” exit.
Apple “threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Elon Musk said in another tweet.
Both Apple and Google demanded that the social networking apps on their app stores have efficient processes for policing offensive content.
However, since Elon Musk assumed control of Twitter, the company has been witnessing a massive staff layoff/resignation phenomenon, affecting its key departments such as the one battling online misinformation.
Additionally, he has allowed accounts that had been previously blocked, including Donald Trump, to come back again online. Nearly 62,000 suspended accounts with more than 10,000 followers, including one account that has over 5 million followers and 75 accounts with over one million followers will be reactivated again, as per reports.
Twitter has also stopped its COVID misinformation policy enforcement, raising concerns among health and media experts.
Failure to follow Apple’s and Google’s criteria would be devastating, according to Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, who thinks that the move may result in the micro-blogging platform’s “expulsion from their app stores.”
Elon Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” justified his actions as part of a “revolution against online censorship in America.”
However, now a Platformer report claims that Twitter’s revamped Blue subscription feature might not be available as an in-app purchase on iOS, in an attempt to dodge Apple’s 30% cut of App Store purchases.