My opinion is irrelevant, but this is a message board and I just don't think this is going to go the way you think it is.
When Parler and Truth Social started, it was in large part due to what some felt was the "woke mob" silencing right wing voices. There was no mass exodus of Twitter users to Parler or Truth though. Nobody created a viable alternative to Twitter, so Elon Musk bought it. He simply can't do that with Apple because he doesn't have that kind of cash. If it wasn't that difficult to make a viable competitor to the iPhone and iOS, there would be more out there than just the litany of Android devices. Ask Amazon how their Fire Phone went or Microsoft what happened to Windows Phone.
Those left-wing voices you're hearing now announcing their departure are just the counter-swing of the right-wing voices announcing their departure since Biden was elected and Trump was kicked off Twitter. I will say this though, I'm seeing far more people creating "backup" accounts on Mastodon and Hive because they doubt Elon Musk's ability to continue running Twitter as a viable product for any length of time and want a place to go if/when Twitter crashes (or worse, sets a pay wall), not because they plan on some politically-motivated mass exodus from Twitter over content moderation or lack thereof.
Speaking of the pay wall, I think that's pretty clearly what this spat with Apple is mostly about. Musk can grandstand about free speech all he wants, but this is about Apple taking 30% of his $8/mo.
I promise I'm not trying to get into some deep philosophical debate with you, but I do feel like "free speech" and "right to a platform" are two totally different things. If I come on here to SPS and post a bunch of spam or constantly troll or start 70 political threads in a day, then there's a chance one of the moderators would ban me from SPS (and rightfully so). They would not be violating my freedom of speech by banning me from SPS, but they would be de-platforming me from their platform, which they have every right to do.
I could be wrong, but I don't think Republicans are going to march lockstep away from iOS over some political issue between billionaires.
Besides, every iPhone user knows that people that show up with blue message bubbles are infinitely more attractive than people that show up with green ones.***
Several thing to point out here:
1- There was a mass exodus from Twitter. It's not that they went to a different platform, it was because they were de-platformed by Twitter. They had been banning people for a long time.
2- Next is the difference between this message board and twitter style apps. In laws governing. In how they classify themselves. Publisher or not. The way several of these are set up, they are considered a public square. You can not operate and ban people from the public square for saying masks do what work (happened alot) or that you are concerned about the shot (happened alot) and ask for those gov protections.
The 5th ruled this year:
Federal court rules Big Tech has no 'freewheeling First Amendment right to censor'
Fifth Circuit said the platforms argued for "a rather odd inversion of the First Amendment" that "buried somewhere in the person’s enumerated right to free speech lies a corporation’s unenumerated right to muzzle speech."
"Today we reject the idea that corporations have a freewheeling First Amendment right to censor what people say,"
This will head to the SCOTUS. And they have already given indications that they are going to uphold the 5th. Not only that, some have indicated they are monopolies saying “the concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties” is troubling.
3- Next is the monopoly of Big Tech. The whole "build your own" was flat out proven you can't with a company called GAB. Big tech got together and deplatformed them. Google can crush any company within that sphere, They did it with them. They even threatened banks and more to defund GAB... and they did it.
PayPal and Stripe cut off service to the social network, and
credit card companies followed a year later. The social network has also been blacklisted by the Apple App store and the Google Play store, hampering its ability to reach consumers on smartphones. Google and Mozilla, creator of the Firefox web browser, also banned a
Gab commenting extension from their browsers.
4- People are very aware now of what's happening. Ask Disney who just lost a crap ton of money and the film was the biggest flop in the history of Disney and it prompted the returned CEO to say he is steering clear of involving the company in politics from this point forward. If you think that people are not paying attention to all of this, just venture out and look. So when you say people will not walk away from iPhones... going to disagree with you.
So while I agree, people can spend their money how they want, it does not mean that Apple can. They have an obligation to the stockholders. Pulling Twitter from their store will cost Apple money, thus wealth of the stockholders. They day that happens (and I personally think they will because they have in the past) is the day that apple stocks drop. Twitter is that big.
6- YES SIR!! a person can be smart and lack common sense. See it regularly.
www.britannica.com
