The Musk Wars

After accusing Apple of cutting advertising spending on Twitter, Musk fired off a tweet storm, claiming the company threatened to remove Twitter from the Apple App store. The entrepreneur also noted that he is willing to “go to war” with the massive company.

Apple has not commented on whether Twitter is at risk of being removed from the app store or if it had cut advertising on Twitter. In early November, an ad agency representing Apple, Omnicom Media Group, advised clients to “pause activity on Twitter in the short-term.” Omnicom cited concerns about impersonation due to Musk’s revamp of the Twitter verification check marks and layoffs in Twitter’s trust and safety departments.

During his Twitter tirade, Musk also called out Apple’s 30% cut of in-app purchases from applications downloaded on the its app store. It's worth noting Google also takes a 30% cut from apps in its Google Play store; however, both companies have been criticized by developers in the past and the practice was probed by the US Justice Department in 2020.

Also in 2020, Epic Games filed a lawsuit after Apple removed the popular online game Fortnite from its store in response to Epic enabling in-app payments that circumvented Apple’s system and allowed users to pay Epic directly.

That case ended in a split ruling, forcing Epic to pay Apple $6 million and ruling the game company failed to prove Apple was a monopoly, but it also ordered Apple to allow alternative payment methods. Apple has appealed the ruling and requested an injunction to delay the December 9 deadline to implement the required features.