Elon Musk. Photo by Frederic J. BROWN / AFP
The world richest man and new Twitter boss Elon Musk has signalled a “war” with Apple, one of the world’s most valuable companies.
This over Apple’s tight control of what is allowed on the App Store, with the magnate saying the iPhone maker has threatened to oust his recently acquired social media platform.
Apple was trending on Twitter on Tuesday, following a series of tweets including a meme of a car with his first name on it veering onto a highway off-ramp labelled “Go to War”, instead of continuing onwards towards “Pay 30%”.
Elon Musk joined the chorus crying foul over the 30% fee Apple collects on transactions via its App Store.
“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” Musk tweeted.
Elon Musk also complained about Apple advertising on the Twitter social medina platform.
“Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America? What’s going on here Tim cook?”
According to AFP, Apple did not immediately respond to Musk’s comments
The Cupertino tech giant was Twitter’s biggest advertiser in the first quarter of this year – spending $48m on ads on the social network.
This accounted for 4% of the company’s revenue in that period, the Washington Post reported, citing an internal Twitter document.
Meanwhile, Musk announced on Friday that the platform would be launching different coloured badges to distinguish between accounts.
“Sorry for the delay, we’re tentatively launching Verified on Friday next week,” Elon Musk tweeted.
“Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates.”
Elon Musk’s proposal for users to be able to pay to be “verified” and obtain a blue badge on their profiles has caused confusion since he acquired the social media giant last for $44bn month.
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