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Elon Musk Scraps Covid Misinformation Policy as He “Goes to War” on Apple Over Free Speech After Threat to Pull Twitter From App Store

by Will Jones
29 November 2022 10:28 AM

Elon Musk has abandoned Twitter’s COVID-19 misinformation policy after vowing to make the site a free speech champion. The Telegraph has the story.

“Effective November 23rd 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy,” a notice on its website reads.

A page on Twitter’s website titled “COVID-19 misleading information policy” now redirects users to Twitter’s user help homepage.

That page previously said: “Content that is demonstrably false or misleading and may lead to significant risk of harm (such as increased exposure to the virus, or adverse effects on public health systems) may not be shared on Twitter.”

Other, more generalised policies on posting deliberately false or misleading information on Twitter are still listed on the company’s website and appear to be being enforced.

Meanwhile, the maker of the Fortnite series of games has come to Musk’s defence after the Twitter owner accused Apple of threatening to pull the social network from its App Store.

Mr. Musk attacked the iPhone maker with a flurry of tweets on Monday, saying the company had cut its Twitter advertising and threatened to bump the social network from Apple’s App Store. 

The SpaceX chief executive asked whether Apple hated free speech, criticised its app fees and even pondered whether the tech giant might go after another of his companies, Tesla. 

Mr Musk, 51, also posted a meme suggesting he planned to “go to war” rather than pay the 30% fee.

Tim Sweeney, the chief executive of Epic Games, which makes the hugely successful Fortnite series, gave his support, calling Apple “a menace to freedom worldwide”.

In 2019, Epic sued Apple for anticompetitive behaviour with its App Store, but a judge ruled largely in favour of the world’s most valuable company last year.

Both Epic and Apple are appealing the case after the judge also said Apple should allow developers to link customers to their own payment systems. 

Mr. Sweeney said: “Epic attempted to open discussions for five years, from 2015 to 2020. Apple would never talk. This is chronicled in the public record of the Epic v Apple antitrust trial. Apple is a menace to freedom worldwide. They maintain an illegal monopoly on app distribution, they use it to control American discourse, and they’re endangering protesters in China by storing sensitive customer data in a state-owned data center.”

Worth reading in full.

Stop Press: Ron DeSantis has waded in to the row, saying: “If Apple responds to that by nuking them from the App Store, I think that would be a huge, huge mistake and it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that would merit a response from the United States Congress.”

This article has been updated.

Tags: AppleCensorshipElon MuskFree SpeechTwitterWoke Gobbledegook

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10 Comments
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TheGreenAcres
TheGreenAcres
2 years ago

Google are much worse in terms of privacy but at least you can side-load apps on Android.

Having had high end phones from both OS makers I think I prefer Apple’s privacy controls over Google’s less restrictive app controls. I doubt whether any competitor will be able to breach the phone OS market unless we get some serious anti-trust legislation.

7
0
TheBasicMind
TheBasicMind
2 years ago

I wish I could get a direct line to Elon Musk, because, having a software background, I have come up with the ideal solution for how he can do battle with Apple.

One solution is for twitter to go Browser based. However historically web browser based apps have faired badly because they they don’t have the super responsive performance users love when using apps (though people forget that in early iOS there was short period of time when Apple encouraged third parties to develop browser based apps over native apps)

However due to previous anti trust findings, Apple are bound by law to accept other Browsers on the platform. So Musk can develop a browser (or rather buy in and adapt) and ensure it has specific hooks in it for delivering and accelerating UI widgets Twitter uses. Google already do this with Amp, but Amp is a generalised user experience for developed for news story browsing. If the same approach is taken but where the accelerations suit Twitter’s precise UI widgets, with the right local caching strategy and on today’s phones, the performance can be increased so it feels like a native app. the widgets can also be designed such that the front and foremost experience is Twitter centric. Though there would need to be somewhere the ability to enter URL’s to access other sites so it still qualifies as a browser and to put more pressure on Apple the accelerated UI widgets though specific to Twitter’s design, should be available (brand elements separated of course) for use by other websites. .

I hope his team have thought of this. They could well come up with this solution independently. But if they haven’t – anyone reading this that is friends with Musk?

Last edited 2 years ago by TheBasicMind
43
0
RW
RW
2 years ago
Reply to  TheBasicMind

Current user interfaces of so-called web apps are entirely implemented in Javascript running on the client (browser). They only incur network latencies insofar they have to talk to some server on the internet. Consequently, there’s little room for widget optimization here. I also think there’s a very much different reason why users prefer install once applications over download per run ones: They keep the same UI and remain working regardless of fashions which come and go quickly in the web devslopper community. Anything server-based keeps being changed for the sake of changing it, frequently breaking stuff in the process, and requires regular browser updates as older browser versions become unsupported and stuff then starts to break.

2
0
TheBasicMind
TheBasicMind
2 years ago
Reply to  RW

This is highly inaccurate and shows a a very large dollop of confusion about the constraints. Answer, there are none. It’s software, and the best thing about software is you can make it run however you like. They can write their own own alternative scripting language if they like. But there is no need, there are already higher performance alternative languages like Google backed Kotlin that can be run as a browser scripting language. But there’s not even any need for that. Because they can write the widgets in native code.The widgets efficiently present data conforming to the Twitter’s data design. They can be made very specific to displaying data confirming to Twitters information architecture. And they expand the DOM to provide a proprietary interface to the the widgets from Javascript. JavaScript is then a very light data interface layer doing no app logic work and is used just for little more the async JSON data fetches and posting and it is already very highly optimised for that and will have virtually zero effect on performance. Proprietary extensions to the DOM have been an ever present fact throughout the history of browser development and Apple have done plenty of that themselves in the past, so there is no precedent for banning a browser because it implements some non standards based code. The widgets are all locally cached so app startup time is just as fast as for native code, but with the slight additional overhead of the browser engine. The time it takes to open a browser is hardly a deal breaker though.

Last edited 2 years ago by TheBasicMind
5
0
RW
RW
2 years ago
Reply to  TheBasicMind

That you really believe this is true and makes technical sense doesn’t mean it is true and makes technical sense.

1
0
TheBasicMind
TheBasicMind
2 years ago
Reply to  RW

I’m a systems architect mate, I have implemented multi-country large scale software services for Digital television systems. I have run software teams working from and across 6 countries. I’ve even run projects adapting browsers for deployment on STB’s. I know it makes sense 😆 .

Last edited 2 years ago by TheBasicMind
16
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DomH75
DomH75
2 years ago

My basic phone is smart enough to have WhatsApp on it an no more. It uses Simplified Android, which is the basic open source Android code without the layers of Google crap. People should bin the smartphones full stop unless they really need them.

22
0
Brett_McS
Brett_McS
2 years ago
Reply to  DomH75

Basic, dumb phones but with simple abilities like playing MP3s are making a comeback.

12
0
JXB
JXB
2 years ago

When all the information about CoVid, lockdowns, masks, vaccination from official sources have been lies, what exactly is the point of reference against which CoVid ‘misinformation’ or ‘disinformation’ was adjudicated other than anything exposing the lies must be so classified?

And climate change too.

Last edited 2 years ago by JXB
23
0
Brett_McS
Brett_McS
2 years ago

Apple have been caught helping the CCP to quell the riots in China. Advantage, Musk.

12
0

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