Apple threatened to withhold Twitter from App Store: Elon Musk

Elon Musk on Tuesday said that tech giant Apple has threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store and mostly stopped advertising on the microblogging platform.

"Apple has mostly stopped advertising on Twitter. Do they hate free speech in America?" Musk wrote in a tweet, in which he tagged Apple chief executive Tim Cook.

"This is a battle for the future of civilization. If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead," the Tesla CEO said. 'The Twitter Files' on free speech suppression will soon be published on Twitter itself, he said, adding that the public deserves to know what really happened. Musk attacked the iPhone maker for taking huge commissions on App Store purchases. "Did you know Apple puts a secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store?," he asked his followers.

This comes days after Musk said that he would consider making an "alternative phone" if the microblogging platform gets removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play. "If there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone," he had said.

Meanwhile, Twitter's paid verification plan will make a comeback this coming Friday with colour-coded categories for individuals, government accounts and private companies. Gold check for companies, grey check for government, blue for individuals (celebrity or not) and all verified accounts will be manually authenticated before check activates.

Earlier this month, Twitter suspended its new verification scheme that allowed anyone to buy a blue check mark for $8 wiped off billions of dollars from Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin's market cap after their official Twitter handles were impersonated to spread disinformation.

To crack down on fake verified accounts, Twitter said it will enable organisations to identify which other Twitter accounts are actually associated with them. "We will enable organizations to manage affiliations," Musk had said, adding that increasing granularity about what "verified" actually means is the right move.

To identify parody accounts, Musk had said that accounts engaged in parody must include "parody" in their name, not just in bio. "To be more precise, accounts doing parody impersonations. Basically, tricking people is not ok."

On November 16, the new owner of Twitter said the microblogging platform is very slow in India, Indonesia and many other countries. Musk also apologised for Twitter being super slow in many countries. Same app in the US takes around 2 seconds to refresh, but around 20 seconds in India, "due to bad batching and verbose comms."

"10 to 15 secs to refresh homeline tweets is common. Sometimes, it doesn’t work at all, especially on Android phones… Only question is how much delay is due to bandwidth/latency/app," Musk wrote in a tweet.