Elon Musk
AppleInsider may earn an affiliate commission on purchases made through links on our site.
If Apple and Google were to kick Twitter from their online stores, Elon Musk has warned he will make his own “alternative phone” to the iPhone and Android devices.
Twitter has gone through many changes in its time under the ownership of Elon Musk, including some major ones. However, alterations to policies regarding moderating policies, as well as other major events, can potentially force app stores to act down the road as things deteriorate.
In the potential event that Apple has to take down Twitter from the App Store, or that Google does the same for the Play Store, Musk isn’t worried about it. Instead, he says he’ll act like Futurama’s Bender and make his own smartphone.
In a Friday response to a tweet proposing Musk could make a smartphone if Apple and Google did eject Twitter, the billionaire hopes “it does not come to that, but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone.”
Musk doesn’t go into details about the smartphone plan, so it may be viewed as a throwaway remark, but it’s also not something to discount. Musk created The Boring Company as well as sold “flamethrowers” online, both seemingly on a whim, and with considerable investment quickly put into each.
Given his massive resources and teams of employees on hand, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that Musk has the capability of creating a competitor to the iPhone and popular Android devices. Whether it becomes popular enough to sustain and capture the attention of the public to purchase them is another matter.
Despite being a major service, there’s always a chance that Apple could pull access to the app from the App Store, since it has to abide by the same App Store policies as anyone else. That includes rules that force social apps to have some level of content moderation in place, which Apple has previously acted upon.
In early 2021, Apple pulled the controversial social media app Parler from the App Store for failing to submit moderation guidelines, as well as for hosting objectionable content. Apple later allowed the app back into the App Store once it made changes.
With Friday’s declaration of an inbound suspended account “amnesty,” Musk could soon be testing those same App Store rules.
