Elon Musk says Apple has basically stopped advertising on Twitter

According to Twitter CEO Elon Musk, Apple has basically stopped advertising on Twitter and asked Apple if it hates free speech.

Musk went on to post a poll asking whether Apple should publish all censorship actions it takes that affect customers, after which he began retweeting content from companies Apple had moderate discussions. He also retweeted a 1984 parody video from Epic Games that suggested Apple had a monopoly on the app store.

Musk also said,

Apple also threatened to remove Twitter from the App Store without telling us why.

Since Musk took over Twitter, advertisers have been pulling back on Twitter-based ad campaigns because of Musk's moderation practices and the reactivation of previously banned accounts. In the past few weeks, Musk has laid off more than half of Twitter's staff, including many responsible for policy development and content moderation. This created problems for advertisers, especially after the launch of the $8 Twitter Blue subscription, which included account verification, and Twitter users quickly learned they could spend $8 to impersonate high-profile accounts and companies, leading to The platform being in disarray.

Last week, a report from the nonprofit Media Matters showed that Twitter had lost half of its top 100 advertisers. These advertisers spent $2 billion on Twitter in 2020 and only about $750 million in 2022, so Twitter faces a significant loss in advertising revenue. AT&T, CNN, Dell, Allstate, DirecTV, Hewlett-Packard, Nestle, Coca-Cola, Verizon, General Mills, Volkswagen, Wells Fargo, and others are no longer running Twitter ads.

Musk has tried to persuade advertisers to stay on the platform, even calling some brand CEOs himself. Musk has been "rebuking" companies that have stopped running Twitter ads.

If Twitter gets to the point where Apple and Google are removed from its store for its lack of content moderation, Musk said he would build a replacement phone. He did not want to go to that point but would do so if there were no other options.