A month into Elon Musk’s reign at Twitter, the chaos at the social network continues.
Musk started off the week by calling out Apple, saying the iPhone maker had threatened to block Twitter from its app store and had mostly stopped advertising on Twitter.
Twitter’s billionaire owner asked in a series of tweets whether Apple hated free speech and if it would go after Tesla, his electric-car company.
“Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?” asked Musk.
“Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why,” he added.
He also lashed out at Apple’s app store fees, posting a meme suggesting he’d prefer to “go to war” then pay the 30% cut the company takes from most purchases made through its store.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
Top advertisers pull back
If the company has pulled back on its Twitter ads it would not be alone, with a recent report finding Twitter had lost half of its top advertisers since Musk acquired the platform at the end of October.
Longtime Apple executive Phil Schiller deleted his Twitter account earlier this month, shortly after Musk reinstated the account of former President Donald Trump. Schiller oversees the app store.
Trump’s reinstatement prompted civil rights organizations including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Anti-Defamation League to urge an ad boycott of Twitter.
In taking on Apple, Musk risks further ruffling the feathers of a company that had been one of Twitter’s top advertisers. Apple spends well over $100 million to advertise on the social network annually, according to Bloomberg News, which cited people familiar with the matter.
In the first quarter of this year, Apple spent $48 million on ads on Twitter, according to the Washington Post, which reviewed a document compiled from internal Twitter data.
