By Carlos Esteban*
(Opinion) The story is that the purchase of Twitter by tycoon Elon Musk has come to be like kicking a hornet’s nest.
Today, people do not learn so much about what is happening in the world through conventional media but through social networks, and the “woke” regime could sleep easy knowing that the big technology monopolies were censoring all information in their favor.
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It was like having the control exercised by the Chinese tyranny but keeping all the democratic paraphernalia.
And here came Musk who ordered them to stop.
(Ron deSantis)
After a bizarre negotiation, Musk took over the short message service Twitter and liberated the social network that this power and its lackeys fear most: freedom of expression.
And panic spread from the White House to Brussels, passing through the tech companies.
Twitter had to be ruined, and soon.
And here enters the world’s largest monopoly, Apple, a subscriber to the “woke” culture, always at ease with the Democrats and Chinese tyranny.
This allows it to have an army of cheap employees manufacturing its expensive models-which has shown its “concern” about Musk’s intention to end censorship and threatens to eliminate the social network of the little blue bird from its App Store.
And almost everyone logs on to Twitter via that app.
Enters Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the thorn in the side of the “woke” regime with his recently revalidated overwhelming majority and champion of freedom against Washington and against “woke” capitalism, as he demonstrated in his victory over Disney.
DeSantis and other Republicans have already stated that Apple’s alleged threat to remove Twitter from its App Store warrants a Congressional investigation.
“It would be a big, big mistake and a really blatant display of monopoly power that I think would merit a response from the Congress of the United States,” DeSantis said in Duval County, Fla.
The “old regime” on Twitter attempted to “stifle dissent” regarding the COVID-19 reports, DeSantis asserts, adding that Apple acts as a “vassal of the Chinese Communist Party” while exploiting its “corporate power in America…to stifle Americans.”
Well played.
The governor is referring to reports that Apple has blocked some features of its popular AirDrop service in China so that users cannot circumvent the regime’s tight control over their communications amid widespread protests against “zero COVID-19” policies.
“Apple has all but stopped advertising on Twitter – do they hate free speech in the U.S.?” tweeted Musk recently.
“Apple has also threatened to remove Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why.” The tech billionaire also asked CEO Tim Cook directly, “What is happening?”
What’s going on is something that has been debated for some time now, with no one daring to put the kibosh on it: the extremely dangerous control a handful of tech companies exert over public discourse.
DeSantis is not the only Republican to argue that Apple and Google have too much control over the Internet through their respective app download stores.
Removing Twitter from both would mean the social networking app would be severely limited in its growth and use.
Parler, a social networking platform favored by conservatives, was removed from the App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Web Services days after the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill incident.
The website could not be accessed for more than a month, and data shows that its usage dropped significantly during that period and never recovered.
“We need to end the App Store duopoly before the end of the year. No one should have this kind of market power,” Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck has written, The Epoch Times reports.
Also, Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) notes that “Apple and Google currently have a stranglehold on businesses and have used their influence to bully them.”
Meanwhile, Musk has announced a “blanket amnesty” for Twitter users banned for violating its rules.
The accounts of former President Donald Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and others have been reinstated recently.
* Carlos Esteban, 58 years old, fifteen years at the leading economic daily EXPANSIÓN, then part of the Recoletos Group, the last three years as head of Interactive Services on the newspaper’s website. Then in Intereconomía, where I founded the Catholic weekly ALBA, I wrote the opinion in ÉPOCA, where I also covered the International section, for which I was responsible when La Gaceta was born (as a generalist newspaper). For the last few years, I have worked freelance, collaborating with different media.
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