He forgets, of course, that Apple's iPhone helped turn Facebook (later Meta) into a mobile advertising powerhouse. Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg took the opportunity to complain that Apple's monopoly was unsustainable (opens in new tab). Republican congresspeople came to Musk's defense and some even threatened to open an investigation. Still, people took Musk at his word and started to treat this like news. The tweet, prompted by Musk's anger and fear that Apple might 1) Kick Twitter out of the App store because Twitter's evolving content moderation policies and decision to invite back in unsavory characters on the platform might lead it to run afoul of Apple's app store policies and 2) the reality that Twitter could not run its Twitter Blue program and $8-a-month subscription fee on iOS without paying Apple a 30% commission. Now, though, the battle is fresh in people's minds thanks to Twitter owner Elon Musk who believes he discovered a " secret 30% tax on everything you buy through their App Store. It even beat back on appeal (at least it's in appeal right now) the ruling that would've allowed Epic and other developers to put links and buttons to external transaction pages, basically circumventing the Apple App Store payment system and that commission. It's been mostly winning the case against Epic, too. Put another way, every time Apple charged a developer 30%, the developer passed that cost along to consumers. Pepper and company felt that the 30% commission had become a "tax" on consumers. Pepper, wherein Robert Pepper and some Apple customers sued Apple over its complete control of the app store. I know a lot of people believe that Fortnite parent Epic launched this battle, but that's not true.
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