Elon Musk, the idol of the moment of the American extreme right, the battering ram of Trumpism, has more or less the same “flip flop” attitude that characterizes the former US president, who just as well says one thing or the opposite. The owner of Twitter blessed the executive director of Apple on Tuesday, in the same way that he cursed him in the previous days. “Business is business”, as the saying goes.
The self-appointed “chief tweeter” launched a message in which a view, one would even say bucolic, of the pond on the campus of the Cupertino barracks is observed. The company of the bird chirped in the territory of the company of the bitten apple. Musk visited Cook and announced it with that photo and this comment: "Thanks to Tim Cook for hosting me in his nice quarters."
In this surprise visit, according to The Wall Street Journal, although Bloomberg qualified that it was apparently scheduled, it occurs after Musk on Monday accused Apple of curbing freedom of expression (or the toxic way how he understands it), and accusing the tech giant to maneuver to expel the Twitter app from the iPhone. Those of Cupertino have not commented on it.
This face-to-face was the meeting of the richest man in the world, the top boss of the most valuable company, and is interpreted as a possible attempt at détente. As the two companies headed toward collision after Musk's outburst on Monday, experts believe Twitter and Apple share many reasons for keeping the peace.
The accusation made from the social network led others to launch the attack. This is what the head of Spotify did, Daniel Ek, who has disputes with the Cupertino firm over alleged monopoly practices and who took the opportunity to make a thread of tweets against Cook. "As so many entrepreneurs have pointed out, Apple is shameless in its harassment... Apple is acting in its own best interest and also does not show that it cares about the law or the courts," he said.
Several cheating legislators seconded Musk's attack on Apple. One of the loudest is Jim Jordan, who does not stop tweeting in defense of the new owner and his policy of allowing insults or spreading misinformation about the pandemic or vaccines.
Apple is one of the biggest advertisers on Twitter and controls access to the iPhone for more than 1 billion users of the platform. Musk's aggressive response meant putting the iPhone maker in the crosshairs of Republican lawmakers, long nervous about the power of Silicon Valley liberals. Musk has framed his battle with Apple as a war against tech giants that “limit” the right to free speech.
Before the founder of Tesla took command of the blue bird network, and therefore their businesses overlapped, the relationship between Musk and Cook was scarce. The Apple CEO said in 2021 that he had never spoken with Musk, although the two shared a table at a meeting organized by Donald Trump shortly after entering the White House.
