Just because you think you’re hosting a really swell combo Klan rally and clambake, Coca-Cola is under no obligation to sponsor the shindig or put up big Coke banners up by the burning crosses. Yeah, this is an Elon rant.

Today, Elon declared war on Apple. He got pretty melodramatic.

My dude, you make an app that primarily shares cat pics, dank memes and dunking to the edge of harassment. And in the grand scheme of things, it’s pretty small – it’s not even a top 10 social media app. And that was before you decided to turn it into $8chan. It’s gonna get smaller.

Now then, there are good reasons for Elon to be mad at Apple. To wit:

1) Apple has cut their ad spend. Apple was Twitter’s top advertiser before Elon. They spent $48M in 3 months (1 quarter) earlier this year, which was 4% of Twitter’s revenue.

2) Apple’s 30% cut. Elon posted this a little later.

Why, yes, Elon. I did know this. Everybody who has ever made an iOS app knows this (we also know it goes down to 15% in the second year). It definitely wasn’t a ‘secret’ of any sort. This is the sort of thing that any competent business person on the Internet should know before they, say, spend $44B on a website with no real plans to make that back from a business that’s treading water.

For iOS users, that $8 will be closer to $5.60 for the first year. There are ways around it. Netflix, for example, doesn’t let you pay in-app, urging you to go to a website to pay.

Now I’m not thrilled about Apple in this case, but let’s not pretend its unusual – Steam’s cut is in the same ballpark.

3) Apple’s threats to delist the app from the store. I’ve always considered this a longshot eventuality, but apparently it’s a real enough concern for Elon to publicly air it.

Apple will pull your app from the store for all sorts of insane reasons (trust me, I’ve been there!) but it’s not a decision they take lightly.

Anyway, these are three very good reasons for Twitter to tread cautiously when dealing with Apple. Apple is a goliath. It’s the biggest company in the world. As rich as Elon is, Apple earns twice Elon’s net worth every YEAR (and that was before Elon set fire to his valuation on this fools’ errand). Surely Elon will realize the position he’s in, and go to Apple with proper deference and…

No, sorry. Instead he’s going to launch his army of flying monkeys at the CEO of the company who was, until recently, his company’s #1 source of revenue. In order to shame them into playing nice.

LOL. Words cannot express the degree in which Apple does not give a fuck about antics like this. They famously punted Fortnite off the app store for not playing by the rules when Fortnite was generating hundreds of millions of dollars for Apple. Amazon, Netflix and other giants have also gone toe-to-toe with Apple over Apple’s rules and 30% cut. All have been humbled.

Twitter, a relatively miniscule company with little cash and enormous debt, has no chance if those companies didn’t. Apple’s mercy is all the hope they have. That comes from compliance. Defiance and openly flouting the rules are not likely to go well for Twitter.

Two days ago, I thought the odds of Twitter being delisted were remote. Now, Elon’s begging to be made an example.

Let’s go back to this first tweet.

Free speech is a noble goal. Everyone at Apple probably supports it in principle. But it’s also a trap. Taken too far, and you no longer have a civilized business. As a simple comparison, you absolutely can run a restaurant where you encourage people to stand on the counters and shout racial epiphets at other customers. It’s completely legal to do that, and within your rights as a business owner. But you shouldn’t expect to stay in business for long, and you shouldn’t expect anyone to want to stay in business with you.

Here are some reasons why Apple might be wary:

1) They probably don’t want to associate too closely with a company that has an enormous CSAM problem after Elon gutted the teams that were tasked to finding and getting rid of child porn and reporting that stuff to authorities.
2) They probably don’t want their ads appearing next to tweets from the virulent antisemites Elon is letting back into the service.

3) They probably don’t want their ads appearing next to tweets from the open nazis Elon is letting back into the service – and giving verified checkmarks to.
4) They probably don’t want their ads appearing next to tweets from the aggressively homophobic and transphobic folks people are letting back into the service, especially just a week after a shooting targeting a drag show that many of these people are cheering and/or blaming on the victims.
5) They probably don’t want their ads appearing next to those of a guy who tried to overturn American democracy.
6) They probably don’t want their ads appearing on a service that just let back in a whole bunch of people who led harassment campaigns against other users, especially minority users.
7) They probably don’t want to keep an app on the app store that is certain to fail Europe’s very harsh GDPR regulations – failure to comply became almost certain once Elon laid off the team that ensured compliance.
8) They probably don’t want to keep an app on the app store where impersonation of famous people will remain ridiculously easy.
9) They probably don’t want to maintain relations with a company where a huge percentage of the people who maintain relations with advertisers have quit or been fired, and where the tools are slowly starting to break.
10) They probably don’t want to maintain relations with a company whose owner thinks the fact that they had a Trust and Safety division was a joke.
11) They’re probably not a big fan of the fact that the CEO himself passes around tinfoil hat nuttery and obvious fabricated news.
12) They probably don’t want to advertise for a platform where activists are actively ridiculed and demonized and blamed for Elon being flatly unable to deal with any of these concerns.

And before you think that Apple is being a big baby, one should note that half of Twitter’s top advertisers have made a similar decision. This isn’t Marxism. This is crass capitalism. Advertisers didn’t want to advertise on 8chan, and they won’t want to advertise on $8chan either.