It's now been weeks, Apple, Do the right thing by users instead of your shareholders and block the child porn factory that is still X and Grok, because it's clear that they aren't going to make changes that matter until they have to.
Once again, Apple has chosen shareholders over users, willingly choosing to placate Elon Musk and leave X and Grok on the App Store. And all this, even as it still churns out child porn and deepfake nudes of the unwilling.
Twitter and now X has a porn problem that's mostly gone uncorrected and unmoderated in the interest of "free speech absolutism." And it's gotten worse.
In case you've been off the internet for a while, Elon Musk's Grok on X has been generating child porn and deep fake porn of adults who never consented to it for weeks, and perhaps months. When called on it, Musk took the smallest countermeasure possible.
He shrugged, and didn't stop Grok from generating the literally illegal porn. Instead, he just limited generation to paid members.
It didn't go unnoticed. On Friday, January 9, some Democrats asked Apple and Google to temporarily pull X from the App Store pending an investigation.
As of the morning of January 28, two weeks after initial publication of this, nothing has happened. And, an expose has been published accusing both Apple and Google of hosting other porn-generating apps on their App Stores.
Both "gatekeeping" companies are being cowards about it, cowed for some reason by Musk, and worshipping at the altar of the almighty dollar.
Apple is clear that this porn generation and hosting isn't allowed, but app approval is scattershot
Apple uses App Store review guidelines as a cudgel, and they are unevenly applied. And, we have first-hand experience with that. Once upon a time, the AppleInsider App was denied approval, because the homepage was talking about how Alibaba researchers had jailbroken iOS 11.2.1 on the iPhone X.
Not coding issues, not anything else. Just what the reader app showed as news from the homepage. That caused a rejection.
There's more, of course. And more egregious examples.
Emulator developers have complained to us that app review is capricious. Utility developers have told us that they fixed a typo, and got denied for something ridiculous. Game developers have complained that an update to their game got rejected because a blatant copy of their game that was allowed on the app store got credit for being the first-mover.
And yet, at a whim, without a clear rejection reason, Apple pulled the ICEBlock app, where nothing illegal was happening. Despite the protestations of the feds to the contrary, it is legal to film cops and ICE, and it's legal to relay where this video filming took place.
It's just as legal for Apple's Maps to report a speed trap.
Yet, just for the asking, the app was purged. It violated no App Store review prohibition, nor broke any laws.
The feds, specifically President Trump's Department of Justice just didn't like it. A request was all it took to get the app removed.
What rules are X and Grok are breaking by hosting child porn and deepfake nudes?
I wrote most of this editorial on January 7. I did what I could to reach X, and called and emailed multiple Apple contacts, and nobody had anything to say. Silence across the board.
Paid illegal porn is still against the law. It's not a protected free speech issue for X or Musk, because illegal "speech" like child porn is still very, very illegal.
Not only is it hosting porn, which is in direct violation of Section 1.1.4 of Apple's review rules, it's also hosting illegal content.
And, it's probably violating section 1.2.1 which requires moderation of user-generated content which clearly isn't happening, and 1.2 about "Objectification of real people."
Yet, here we are more than a week after the story broke, and four days after the request for removal from some of the feds. Still no removal.
When you're behind the notoriously slow UK government looking at it, and Indonesia and Malaysia doing the right thing and blocking it, it's a very bad look.
It's unsurprising that Apple hasn't moved against Musk here.
Legal drama won't and can't be avoided
I think I know why. I think Musk is a litigious crybaby, and for some reason, Apple and Google are newly afraid of the man.
Elon Musk — image credit: Tesla
Musk has whined that Apple isn't letting Grok win. On X, and in court, he's arguing entirely baselessly that his Grok AI not being promoted on the App Store means there's some secret conspiracy behind the glass of Apple Park.
Predictably, X users and Grok have pointed out that Musk's case is nonsense. Musk says no one but OpenAI gets promoted on the App Store, so users rattled off a list of when Perplexity has been, and when DeepSeek has been too.
And yet, the suit lives. It will kill many column-inches and generate several kiloword before it is said and done, and Musk is handed a loss in court. Then there will be appeals, and he will likely lose them as well, if for no other reason that Apple gets its own free speech rights.
And of course, there's more.
There was Apple pausing advertising on then-Twitter, then backing down under government pressure. And there was Apple giving Musk preferential treatment on the App Store by allowing Twitter to be renamed X — the only single-letter app name ever.
When you pair Musk being sue-happy over his easily refutable lies, and the lack of spine here for Apple when it comes to Musk, that leads to Musk getting his way.
Again. For no real reason.
Losing trust
When you hitch a wagon to a company, there are a lot of factors behind the decision. Cost is one, the reliability of the company, the ease you can get support, all of those are clear factors.
Apple has made another two factors central to its marketing and message — trust and privacy. While Facebook and Google very visibly don't care if they have customer trust, users trust that Apple will do the right thing by the consumer.
For once, this isn't about user data, or targeted advertising claims. It's about trust that the company will do the right thing, that they are not doing. Again.
Apple has the luxury of not having to be afraid of Musk's money, and the iPhone maker has a battalion of lawyers that in manpower alone challenges the combined volume of the Pacific US submarine fleet crews. Why the $4 trillion company is afraid of the mere billionaire, with his paltry billion-dollar companies is beyond me.
This is the chihuahua in Musk scaring the Apple doberman, on a Silicon Valley scale.
Continuing the dog metaphors, I've been saying for over a decade that if Apple saw big marketshare to gain by becoming the kicking puppies company, it would start doing that. This is all one step closer to Tim Cook on a fancy pre-recorded video strolling across Apple Park, doing just that.
After all, Google gave up "don't be evil" about a decade ago, and Facebook never had any company morals to speak of. Why not join two members of the FAANG club.
What's going on with Apple staying silent on Musk's clear as day violations of at least four App Store review policies is hypocritical given the rejections of other apps in the past from thousands of developers for claimed infractions that weren't anywhere near it. Worse, it's a violation of user trust in allowing the non-consensual porn and worse — pornographic imagery involving children — to promulgate on the platform.
Those trust violations are a continuing trend for post-COVID Apple.
It's time for Apple to stand up to Musk and X, like they stood up to Tim Sweeney within hours when his Epic Games violated App Store policies with Fortnite. For the record, Sweeney is against a X ban because of an AI that has gone off the rails, and is using it in his "everybody should be able to make an iOS App Store" campaign.
Or, Apple should give up claims that the App Store has effective curation. At this point, that seems most expedient.
Anyway, if you don't, Apple, it's also time to surrender claims that Apple will do the right thing for users — not just shareholders — like they did in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings, when pressed. That was very nearly a decade ago now, though, and maybe COVID changed Apple too much, like it has the rest of American business.
Because right now, with this, it's clear that the almighty dollar is being considered far more than the users. Again. Still.
Updated January 28: Updated with no motion from Apple, and the results of research on the App Store showing deep fake porn apps proliferate.
