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Apple’s Tim Cook is shaping up as social media’s most effective sheriff - with his latest intervention a threat to remove the Twitter app from the App Store.
It’s not an idle threat, and with it Cook’s loaded pistol is pointed directly at an already wounded Elon Musk.
The genius of Cook’s move is that he hasn’t said a word about it publicly. He has left that job for Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, who has already shown a willingness to run the business through public consultation over the social media platform.
Elon Musk has faced an exodus of staff and advertisers since buying the platform.Credit:Getty Images
In a series of panicked tweets overnight Musk railed about Apple’s threat to “withhold” it from the App Store, a move that would make it almost impossible for Twitter to update its app and pose a threat to its distribution channel.
Apple has good form on this matter. In 2021, it removed the right-wing social media platform Parler from its App soon after the attack on the United States Capitol building by Trump supporters. Parler was later reinstated, but Apple’s actions were crucial in preventing the site from gaining wider traction.
It’s also had no qualms in shutting the door to popular apps like Fortnite after it took offence to Epic Games, the company behind Fortnite, selling things to users directly over the app. That stoush is still playing out in the US courts.
Just how much power Apple holds as a gatekeeper is borne out by the damage it has wreaked to Facebook by curbing its ability to track users and target them with advertisements. Apple’s decision to tweak how ads work on its operating system, iOS, could cost Facebook up to $US12 billion in revenue this year and remove its growth stock credentials.
Marketing itself as a privacy protector has been a deliberate ploy by Apple to burnish its credentials as a defender of consumer privacy. And given the reach of the iPhone and other Apple devices, Cook holds the power to decimate Twitter’s already shaky business, if the current war of words takes a turn for the worse.
Apart from the threat of exile from the App Store, Apple has traditionally been one of Twitter’s largest advertisers. According to Musk, Apple has already removed most of its advertising - even though Apple has remained silent on the issue.