On Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis blasted Apple for allegedly helping the CCP manage protests in China, and for threatening to take Twitter off the app store.
DeSantis made his comments during an appearance to discuss infrastructure projects in Florida.
He first took note about how Apple had, through a software update, limited iPhone Airdrop functionality in China. Airdrop had been used to circumvent Chinese censorship technologies and allow for citizens to communicate freely. Apple has very recently limited functionality of this feature, which is making it more difficult for Chinese protesters to organize.
BREAKING: Gov. DeSantis slams Big Tech censorship after Apple limits Chinese Freedom protesters’ ability to communicate and threatens to remove Twitter from App Store
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 29, 2022
DeSantis then took aim at Apple again for reports that are surfacing about how Apple may remove Twitter from their app store. He said, “And then when you also hear reports that Apple is threatening to remove Twitter from the app store because Elon Musk is actually opening it up for free speech and is restoring a lot of accounts that were unfairly and illegitimately suspended for putting out accurate information about COVID, that’s like one of the main things that’s being reinstated.”
He said, “So many things these experts were wrong at, and you had people on Twitter that were calling that out and Twitter the old regime at Twitter, their response was to try to just suffocate the dissent, and Elon Musk knows that’s not a winning formula.”
DeSantis went on to say, “And so he’s providing free speech, and so if Apple responds to that by nuking them from the app store, you know, I think that would be a huge, huge mistake. And it would be a really raw exercise of monopolistic power that I think would merit a response from the United States Congress.”
“Don’t be a vessel of the CCP on one hand and then use your corporate power in the United States on the other to suffocate Americans and try to suppress their right to express themselves.”
