2022年11月29日

埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)周一(周二AEDT)对推特(Twitter)最大的广告客户苹果(Apple)进行了猛烈抨击，此前他表示，苹果威胁要在没有解释的情况下从其应用商店中屏蔽社交网络，并且大部分已经停止在推特上投放广告。这番长篇大论凸显出，作为全球市值最高的公司，苹果(Apple)对这位全球首富押注Twitter的命运有着巨大的影响力。自从买下该平台以来，埃隆·马斯克面临着员工和广告商的大量流失。这番咆哮还表明，苹果可以发挥制衡马斯克在这家社交网络混乱统治的作用。此前，苹果已经取消了违反其安全政策或托管暴力和其他问题内容的公司在应用商店的特权。如果该公司将Twitter从其应用商店中屏蔽，新用户将无法在他们的iphone和ipad上下载Twitter应用，现有用户将无法访问更新。这一所谓的威胁加剧了马斯克面临的广告商压力、员工离职和监管审查。为了推动“言论自由”议程，他正在寻求彻底改革Twitter多年来的政策和账户暂停。根据《华盛顿邮报》根据推特内部数据汇编的一份文件，第一季度，苹果是推特上最大的广告客户，在广告上花费了4800万美元(7200万美元)。苹果的支出占到Twitter当季收入的4%以上。马斯克在一系列推文中试图向该公司和首席执行官蒂姆·库克(Tim Cook)施压，要求他们暂停在假日购物季期间的支出。 Apple did not respond to requests for comment. In the tweets, Mr Musk sought to stoke long-running concerns and political scrutiny over Apple’s market power. He tweeted a link to a parody video that Apple foe Epic Games made in 2020 criticising the App Store as a “monopoly”. The video is a parody of Apple’s famous 1984 Super Bowl commercial and released by Epic, the maker of the Fortnite video game, after it was kicked off Apple’s store for violating its rules on in-app payments. Advertisement Mr Musk also tweeted a yes-or-no poll, asking his more than 119 million followers whether Apple should “publish all censorship actions it has taken that affect its customers”. “Did you know Apple puts a secret 30 per cent tax on everything you buy through their App Store?” Mr Musk tweeted, with the caption “Spoiler alert”. He signalled in a meme that he intends to “go to war” with Apple. ‘App Store duopoly’ The tweets immediately caught the attention of Washington lawmakers, who have proposed bipartisan legislation that aims to dismantle the power that Apple and Google wield through their app stores. “This is why we need to end the App Store duopoly before the end of this year,” tweeted Republican Ken Buck, who has co-led efforts to pass antitrust legislation targeting large tech companies. “No one should have this kind of market power.” Advertisement App stores can move more quickly than regulators and politicians, who say they are scrutinising Mr Musk’s moves. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at Monday’s briefing that the White House was “keeping an eye on” Mr Musk’s handling of Twitter. Twitter, like other companies, has warned investors in regulatory filings that the success of its services is dependent on their surviving review for compliance with App Store rules. “Such review processes can be difficult to predict, and certain decisions may harm our business,” the company wrote in a filing last year to the Securities and Exchange Commission. A former Twitter executive warned earlier this month that that assessment was an understatement and that Google and Apple’s app stores “may be the most significant check on unrestrained speech on the mainstream internet”. “Failure to adhere to Apple’s and Google’s guidelines would be catastrophic, risking Twitter’s expulsion from their app stores and making it more difficult for billions of potential users to get Twitter’s services,” Yoel Roth, the company’s former head of Trust and Safety, wrote in a New York Times op-ed. App Store representatives regularly raised concerns about the content available on Twitter, Mr Roth said. He cited an example of a time when a reviewer contacted the company concerned about the results that appeared when he searched for “#boobs” in the Twitter app. Another time, a reviewer asked whether a days-old tweet containing an English-language racial slur violated the company’s rules. Washington Post