WASHINGTON: In a series of tweets on Monday, Elon Musk claimed that Apple Inc. had stopped advertising on Twitter and that the company had threatened to block Twitter from its app store without explaining why.
Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022
According to the billionaire Tesla and Twitter CEO, Apple was putting pressure on Twitter regarding content moderation requirements.
In a subsequent tweet, he tagged Apple CEO Tim Cook’s Twitter account and asked, “What’s going on here?”Apple did not respond to requests for comment right away.
Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022
Apple hasn’t confirmed the move, but it wouldn’t be out of the ordinary because the company has always enforced its rules and removed apps for similar reasons in the past.
According to a Washington Post report that cited an internal Twitter document, Apple was the top advertiser on Twitter in the first quarter of 2022, spending $48 million and accounting for more than 4% of the period’s total revenue.
Separately, the social media platform has reversed a policy designed to combat Covid-19-related misinformation, increasing the likelihood of false claims rising.
According to an update posted on its blog page, “Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy effective November 23, 2022.”
The White House has also noticed the chaos on Twitter, announcing on Monday that it is looking for false information on the platform.
