Welland Tribune e-edition

Musk, Twitter row a sign of strange times

NAVNEET ALANG NAVNEET ALANG IS A TORONTOBASED FREELANCE CONTRIBUTING TECHNOLOGY COLUMNIST FOR THE STAR. FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER: @NAVALANG

It started with a meme and ended with what turned out to be a lie.

That is at once both an accurate summation of Elon Musk’s Twitter’s faux-tussle with Apple, and also an encapsulation of what strange times we live in.

The issues in question: That Apple has always both taken a 30 per cent cut of any sales via its App Store, and that it has strict — and some would say draconian — policies regarding what can and can’t appear there.

It is a twofold concern for Twitter. First, key to Musk’s attempt to make Twitter reliably profitable is a subscription program in which users are charged $8 (U.S.) a month to be verified and receive other features.

The problem: The lucrative users in the wealthy parts of the world most likely to pay up for that privilege overwhelmingly use iPhones, meaning that Musk won’t see $8 from many of those users, but rather $5.60.

Secondly, as reported by reputable sources such as Stanford University’s Alex Stamos (the former chief security officer at Facebook), after Musk cut Twitter’s workforce significantly, spam, child exploitation, government interference and hate speech have increased. This runs the risk of the content on the platform running afoul of Apple’s policies — and being removed from Apple devices would be a disaster for the company’s already affected ad business.

For a company already struggling financially — Twitter was barely profitable, and the debt Musk took on to acquire Twitter comes with $1 billion a year in interest costs alone — that double whammy is a looming problem.

Musk took to Twitter to voice his complaints, claiming that Apple’s 30 per cent fee was a “secret tax,” insisting that he was going to “go to war” with Apple over its cut, while also claiming that Apple had cut most of its Twitter advertising.

As it turns out, none of it was true. In a meeting that occurred shortly after Musk’s outburst, Apple CEO Tim Cook assured Musk that Apple had no plans to ban Twitter; Apple had in fact not stopped advertising on Twitter; and as for the so-called secret tax, it has been widely reported on for years in almost every publication imaginable.

So, case closed: Musk is the villain, Apple the hero, and on we go, yes? Not so fast.

The faux-fight between Musk and Apple was a perfect little metaphor for the 2020s: It wasn’t real, both sides are wrong, and there’s no one to root for.

Musk’s recent behaviour including his mockery of progressive politics is as disheartening as it is worrying, Apple is doing precisely what you’d expect a trillion-dollar company to do: flexing its power to solidify what is arguably a monopoly.

The problem is the App Store is not an open marketplace but instead one that is tightly controlled; developers must submit each app and its updates for approval.

To be quite clear, that has obvious upsides. Apple can refuse anything that might, say, pose a security or privacy risk, while also combating sexual exploitation. It’s one reason Apple devices are so popular: the strict controls means apps don’t harm or slow down your iPhone and you can generally trust what’s there.

For the privilege of that safe, regulated environment, Apple charges 30 per cent on any app sales on in-app purchases.

There are two significant problems, though.

One is that the 30 per cent represents a huge cut of revenue.

Spotify, for example, recently drew attention to the fact that its new audiobook business is basically unfruitful because you can’t buy books in the app after Apple forced it to remove the option. If you are buying something, Apple has to get its cut.

Given that Apple also sells audiobooks, this appears to be anti-competitive, and Spotify has appealed to Britain’s competition watchdog.

The other issue is Apple has a say over content, and adult content gets a hard no. Once-popular social network Tumblr removed pornography precisely for that reason.

That can seem sound but beyond the obvious questions of rights — who is Apple to say pornography is wrong, or that sex workers don’t deserve to make a living — why is a significant dimension of being human cut out from Apple’s ecosystem?

I will say it through gritted teeth, but say it nonetheless: Elon Musk isn’t wrong that Apple abuses its power — yes, even though he apparently made up the reason for his critique.

Still, there has in some corners of the internet emerged a narrative that billionaire Musk is fighting for the little guy.

How he is doing this by allowing misinformation, spam and hate to gain traction on Twitter is anyone’s guess, but it is a thing people are saying.

It might be better instead to realize that neither a billionaire nor a trillion-dollar company are fighting for our rights. Rather, the only people on our side are those who call out both — and see the farcical fight between wealthy titans as little more than a distraction.

BUSINESS

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2022-12-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

2022-12-03T08:00:00.0000000Z

https://wellandtribune.pressreader.com/article/281900187235954

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