Musk can't afford a fight with Apple, which controls one of the two major app stores outside of China. He is going to fight anyways.
Musk said that Apple has mostly stopped advertising on the micro-messaging service. I wonder if they hate free speech in America. What's happening here attim_cook? He followed that up with a critique of Apple's market power.
Musk would not say why Apple is threatening the inclusion of the micro-messaging service in the app store. Apple didn't reply to the request for comment.
Apple dominates the US market with more than half of the market. Apple controls a large swath of the mobile app industry even though it has recently been challenged by lawsuits. Apple takes a 30% cut of many apps' subscription revenues, but also enforces its own moderation policies, which apps must adhere to if they want to stay on its store.
Musk may be justified in his upcoming war with Apple. It is easy to criticize Apple for abusing its market power by taking an excessive cut or for imposing top-down speech controls. At a time when the company cannot afford it, Musk is taking on that fight. It is difficult to see how Musk will make money in the short term if he goes to war with advertisers and app stores at the same time.
Musk hasn't done much to appease advertisers since he took over. When it was a public company, it made almost all of its revenue on advertising. Data licensing and a budding subscription business gave the rest of the money.
Musk wants to raise the price of the service to $8 a month. He differentiated it by selling blue check verification badges as part of the package, leading to widespread confusion about who is a public figure on the app.
Major advertisers worry about their brands appearing next to misinformation or just crappy content and he favors a laissez-faire approach to moderation.
Musk bullied advertisers into remaining on the platform rather than playing nice. The Financial Times reported that Musk wanted to personally call the chief executives of brands that had stopped advertising in order to berate them, leading others to reduce their spend to the bare minimum so as to avoid further confrontation with the billionaireentrepreneur.
This strategy underestimates the value of the social network. According to ad buyers, there is no need for a platform for sales or click-throughs. At a time when major companies are cutting their ad budgets due to the economic downturn, it's easy to see why they wouldn't use the social networking site. It's clear that advertisers need more than advertisers need on the micro-messaging site.
One of the founding fathers of the App Store is Phillip Shoemaker. The founder of Identity.com agrees with Musk that the fee for mobile app developers is too high. He said that 10% is enough. It's mind blowing that they make $22 billion a year on this. He doesn't like how Musk is handling this situation.
Apple requires that apps that allow for user-generated content have a system for moderation and reporting. Hate speech is not allowed in the App Store. Parler was removed from the App Store in 2021, but returned months later after making changes that satisfied Apple. Parler wasn't allowed to return until September 2022.
The head of app review for Apple was asked if Musk was in danger of violating the company's rules.
He agreed. I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.
Apple has taken issue with Musk's content moderation policies and enforcement, which has been decimated by layoffs, according to Musk. The clock is running for Musk to pay $1 billion in interest on his account.
Staying on Apple's good side is "life and death" for Twitter's business.
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