Phillip Shoemaker, one of the founders of Apple's App Store who worked side by side with Steve Jobs says staying on Apple's good side is "life and death" for Twitter's business.

Philip Shoemaker, the executive director of Identity.com, joined Cheddar News to discuss the saga between Elon Musk and Apple regarding content moderation and Twitter's place on the Apple app store. "The simplest thing for Elon to do is bring a moderation team back on, make sure that content is being actively moderated, and prove that to Apple," he said.

Staying on Apple's Good Side a Matter of 'Life and Death' for Elon Musk's Twitter

Phillip shoemaker left Apple in 2016 and now runs the digital identity firm identity dot com. And he joins us now, Philip. Thanks so much for joining us this morning. Welcome to the show. So how did musk and Apple get to this point? And how credible is Apple's threat actually to twitter? Well it all started when Ellen decided to get rid of a lot of the company and get rid of the moderators on the team. Apple has a policy that says you need to have active moderation on your content because it's user generated, which means it can really get bad really quickly if people aren't keeping an eye on it. So as soon as he made those notes and notified everybody, he was getting rid of the moderation team and put him on Apple's radar. Now can you explain to us what Apple's playbook is here when it comes to apps that have put themselves in a compromising position for potential removal? Yeah, Apple typically waits about two weeks. They give the company a few weeks to be able to resolve the issues at hand. Now with a company like like twitter, they thought carefully about this. It didn't just go to the app review team, but this went all the way up to tim cook and Phil schiller that the people who are really in charge of Apple and the app store and they, the app review team told them that they needed to fix these problems, otherwise they remove them. So Phil and and tim gave them the thumbs up? They notified Elon's company. And uh and they usually wait about two weeks after that notification is made to fix the problem otherwise they're going to be removed. And so I guess we're probably less than a week away from from that action happening. Now. I want to get some context here on just how Apple how dominant apple actually is with its app store. Can you kind of contextualize that for us? And are there any antitrust concerns that stem from that? Yeah. So if if you think about Apple in general, Apple iphones are there are about 50 52% of the U. S. Market. It's lower lower than 20% worldwide. But just look at looking at the U. S. It's over half the people in the United States gets their uh their information from their iphones. And if Apple controls every single app that goes onto your phone because you can't put on an app on your iphone unless you go through the app store. So Apple controls everything that goes on to your iphone. And they have the ability to remove it at at a whim as well. But if they're in complete control of that setting the rules allowing telling you what you can and cannot do. That's one of the issues. It's also about payment because if you offer digital goods inside of your app you have to give Apple 30% because you have to use Apple's in app payment mechanism. And I think that's another thing that Evan is bristling about is that he's gonna have to give 30% of his $8 twitter blue fee directly to Apple, which will make it much more difficult for him to start getting his margins in mind. Now, Philip this certainly does seem like a high stakes game of chicken here. You know, musk surely stands to lose a lot in a potential battle. You say that it's life and death for twitter. So what is the risk for Apple? Well, the risk for Apple is that Elon's gonna pull a few things that, look there is antitrust notes. As you as you mentioned earlier, I've been I have testified with various antitrust authorities in the world about what Apple's doing etcetera. So this is one of the concerns. But I think the other concern is Elon's gonna push the whole idea of censorship, right? Apple is controls what goes on and off the if that's not censorship, I'm not sure what is. And so that's going to be a concern. If you look early on in Apple's history, there was a lot of issues with them censoring even books which ultimately we had to rein in and make sure that the review team didn't do that. But either one's gonna he's got a big leg to stand on and that is censorship. And I think that is something that might give Apple a black eye. Yeah, absolutely. And obviously there's you know that ongoing risk from Congress to for Apple. But I want to talk about the outcome here. What's the ideal compromise for each side? The simplest thing for L. A. To do is bring a moderation team back on, make sure that content is being actively moderated and prove that to Apple. That's really all he needs to do. But I think he like a longer game is he wants that 30% reduced. He doesn't want to pay that 30%. I think that's a completely different issue than what he's dealing with right now with Apple. He just needs to get moderation in line and then Apple will have no issue with the app. So that compromise pretty much coming from twitter side. If I'm reading that comment, right Philip thank you so much for your time and your insight this morning. That's Phillip shoemaker, Executive director of Identity dot com and founding director of the Apple app store.