Elon Musk’s gangster tech regulation comes for Apple

Elon Musk is calling in another return on his investment in American politics: he’s threatening Apple with a lawsuit because neither X nor xAI’s Grok have been recommended on the iOS App Store. How serious this threat is — well, that’s hard to say, as it was posted between Grok-generated waifus.

“Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps?,” he whined, in a post which was briefly pinned to his profile.

Musk, the CEO of xAI and one of God’s sorest winners, isn’t content with how well his apps are doing in the store. He wants an Apple endorsement, too. If you are unfamiliar with the App Store, first of all, congratulations. But second, there are portions of it that are editorially curated, with the store recommending certain apps as “essentials,” as well as “editors’ choice.” Musk’s apps still appear on the charts — they just aren’t getting boosted by Apple itself on the front page of the iOS App Store.

Apple is, in some sense, splash damage in Musk’s ongoing beef with OpenAI. “Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation,” Musk said in another post.

Now the use of “antitrust violation” here caught my eye. Apple has some significant antitrust action around its App Store, some of which I have witnessed firsthand. Besides the case brought by Epic over Fortnite — the US Supreme Court declined to weigh in, and Fortnite mostly lost but did get back into the US App Store — the Justice Department has brought antitrust action over iPhone lock-in.

It’s also not the first time Musk has used “antitrust” as an excuse to tie a perceived nemesis up in the court system. As part of the aforementioned OpenAI beef, Musk has claimed that OpenAI and Microsoft have attempted to “monopolize the generative AI market” by using exclusivity agreements with investors when raising capital, refusing to let xAI license OpenAI’s tech because of the Microsoft exclusivity agreement, and “lock[ing] down” AI talent.

This is pretty brazen gangster behavior — gangster tech regulation, to be more precise. Sure, Musk and Trump aren’t as close as they once were, but Musk didn’t pay all that money to get Trump elected for nothing. If Musk does file suit, and does so in a friendly court — perhaps that of Tesla shareholder Reed O’Connor, the judge in the Northern District of Texas — the legal pressure could lead to some concessions. It does seem that barely disguised extortion has been fashionable lately among the right wing.

In response to Musk’s provocation, Apple said that the App Store is “designed to be fair and free of bias … we feature thousands of apps through charts, algorithmic recommendations and curated lists selected by experts using objective criteria,” an Apple spokesperson, who wasn’t named, told Bloomberg.

That is obvious horseshit, but not in the way Musk claims.

Let’s just visit Musk’s apps, which I suspect are currently in violation of Apple’s rules. Take Grok, for instance. Apple recently removed three apps that made deepfake nudes, presumably because they created nonconsensual images. Grok, put in “spicy” mode, will create topless Taylor Swift images, even if it is not directly prompted to do so. (Google’s Veo and OpenAI’s Sora have some protections in place to prevent this kind of thing; how good they are is a separate matter.)

There is also the matter of X, the artist formerly known as Twitter. Since Musk’s takeover, it has encountered a variety of moderation problems, including but not limited to: child sexual abuse material (yes, still), graphic animal torture videos, and hate speech. (This is to say nothing of Musk’s own personal antisemitic posting.)

Both apps seem to fly in the face of the App Store guidelines, which say that “apps should not include content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy.” Examples include “overtly sexual or pornographic material;” “realistic portrayals of people or animals being killed, maimed, tortured, or abused;” and “defamatory, discriminatory, or mean-spirited content, including references or commentary about religion, race, sexual orientation, gender, national/ethnic origin, or other targeted groups, particularly if the app is likely to humiliate, intimidate, or harm a targeted individual or group.”

Any social media site that relies on user-generated content is going to have some problems adhering to these guidelines, which is why many of them have — or, I suppose I should say, had — robust moderation. And Twitter was arguably in violation of App Store guidelines before Musk bought it, as Tumblr CEO Matt Mullenweg noted. (Tumblr, of course, has had its own moderation woes in attempting to comply with Apple’s practices.)

When Musk bought Twitter, moderation went out the window. That also created a misinformation problem, which is especially pronounced when it comes to Israel’s war in Gaza, and arguably violates another of Apple’s rules banning “harmful concepts which capitalize or seek to profit on recent or current events, such as violent conflicts.”

Grok doesn’t even have the excuse of moderation or user-generated content; it’s making the violating content all by itself.

Despite all these flagrant violations of App Store policies, Apple has not removed Grok or X from the store. Indeed, it resumed advertising on X in February, after pulling ads for a year in response to Musk’s posts.

So while Musk has a point that Apple unfairly preferences some apps, it is his own apps that benefit. And Apple is really only in a tough spot because it’s Musk throwing a tantrum. After all, it’s not clear that there’s a direct antitrust argument here. Antitrust laws generally target the market power of a firm — ones that suppress competition. So in practice, if Apple is preferencing its own apps in the App Store editorial sections, that may be an antitrust violation. Anticompetitive agreements — like Google buying preference in Safari’s search to prevent Apple from making its own search engine — would also be fair game. There’s no evidence any such agreement exists with OpenAI, although the two companies do have a partnership. Indeed, given Grok’s proclivity for celebrity nudes, it seems likelier that Apple is promoting the AI app that doesn’t make a bunch of naked Taylors Swift.

But if there’s one thing Musk loves doing, it’s tying people up in endless litigation. It’s unlikely that a noisome Musk suit, like the one he filed against Media Matters, will threaten Apple as a going concern. It can, however, lead to embarrassing in-court admissions, serve as a headache and distraction, and otherwise generally be a nuisance. And if Musk still has any sway in the Justice Department, his enmity might make the DOJ more aggressive in pursuing its unrelated antitrust case. In comparison, giving Grok a little visibility boost in the App Store might not seem so bad… except that it tells Musk what will get Apple to crack.

Perhaps this will serve as a lesson to Apple and the rest of us: once you show you’re willing to pay a bribe, the asks don’t quit. It may have been smarter for Apple to continue to refuse to advertise on X. Too late now — Musk wants more, and he thinks Apple will give it. If that’s not our new era of gangster tech, I don’t know what is.