Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, seem to have resolved the tensions that rocked their friendship earlier this year.
Dorsey is once again very active on Twitter, while Musk reacts to most of his posts on the platform. The two billionaires and serial entrepreneurs had aired their differences in broad daylight.
In December, the two men clashed after Musk claimed that Twitter 1.0 did not care about the safety of children on the platform.
"It is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years!" Musk said on Dec. 9.
"This is false," Dorsey immediately pushed back. "I don’t know what happened in past year," Dorsey said. "But to say we didn’t take action for years isn’t true. You can make all my emails public to verify. Company took away my access to email or I would."
Apple May Ban Damus
After a few episodes at the start of the year which suggested that the two entrepreneurs were probably still angry with each other, Musk and Dorsey seem to have settled their differences. The latter is once again present and active on the platform that he co-founded and which now belongs to the former. Dorsey remains a shareholder, having transferred his stake valued at $2 billion in October, when Musk acquired the microblogging site for $44 billion.
Last month, for example, when Dorsey tweeted that America had a problem, Musk responded by explaining that it was probably social media addiction that was plaguing America. Musk then interviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Twitter, who is contesting President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination in the 2024 presidential election. The interview was an opportunity for the techno king to introduce Kennedy to his 143 million followers and give him unprecedented exposure.
Dorsey supports Kennedy.
Musk has once again come to support his friend by joining his voice in denouncing an action that Apple could take against an app backed by Dorsey. Damus, a decentralized social messaging app, warned on Jun. 13 that Apple (AAPL) is threatening to remove the app from its App Store within 14 days.
A little later, Damus made an update, indicating that Apple is willing to retain the app if Damus agrees to withdraw certain payment functionality. Built on the decentralized social network Nostr, Damus offers the possibility of making micro-donations in bitcoin using the Lightning Network – the overlay network allowing one to send and receive fractions of bitcoins instantly and almost free of charge. On Nostr, these types of payments are known as "zaps."
Apple ordered the developers in charge of Damus to remove this feature, under the threat of an outright banishment from the App Store, the app said, because the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is worried that zaps could be used by content creators to sell digital content on its platform.
"Damus will be removed from the app store in 14 days, apple says zaps are not allowed on their platform because they *could* be used by content creators to sell digital content," the platform announced on Twitter. "This is right before we’re about to give our talk at the oslo freedom forum on how decentralized social networks with lightning integration are bringing financial freedom to the masses."
Dorsey Is Unhappy
Damus added that it must remove the "zap button" on posts because Apple considers that "selling digital content."
"Damus has to remove the zap button on posts because this is considered 'selling digital content'. Only zaps on profiles are allowed. This cripples damus pretty bad, but you can still zap at least."
Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company is notorious for banning app developers from offering in-app payments to sell additional content or add-ons, unless those payments go through Apple which then charges a 30% commission.
Alerted by Damus, Dorsey immediately publicized the feud between Apple and the app and called on Apple CEO Tim Cook to reconsider the threat.
This is still incorrect @apple," the billionaire, who is the CEO of payment service company Block formerly known as Square, reacted. "Tipping on posts is not selling digital content. It’s a form of feedback."
"Why limit people sending bitcoin to each other? This is our one opportunity to build a truly global payment protocol for the internet (which would benefit your company immensely). @tim_cook."
'This Is Not a Winning Scenario'
Dorsey then received the support of Musk, who also denounced Apple's position. For the billionaire, if Apple continues to use App Store as a lever to impose its 30% commission, the group risks alienating everyone. In the end, it is not certain that Apple will come out on top, warns the CEO of Tesla and owner of Twitter, who had a similar problem last year with Apple about this same 30% commission.
"If Apple competes against the whole world, Apple will have the whole world against it," Musk warned the iPad maker. "This is not a winning scenario."
"Indeed," Dorsey agreed.
"Apple building on and with bitcoin would benefit their company immensely. Apple has been so great at taking early technologies and protocols and making them easy for everyone," Dorsey said in another tweet. "I hope they are considering this one deeply. I imagine they are."
Musk also called Apple’s 30% commission on money transfer and funding apps like Damus. Patreon and Venmo, a “major concern”.
