Elon Musk Says He Has a Plan If Twitter Gets Kicked Off App Stores | NTD and Epoch Times

November 28, 2022

Elon Musk Has A Plan | Epoch Times

Tech billionaire Elon Musk suggested he would make his own phone amid speculation Twitter could be booted from Google Play or Apple’s App Store.

“I certainly hope it does not come to that, but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone,” he wrote in response to a Twitter post from podcaster Liz Wheeler. “The man builds rockets to Mars, a silly little smartphone should be easy, right?” Wheeler said.

Neither Apple, which makes iPhones, nor Google, which is behind the Android mobile operating system, have publicly indicated that Twitter could be jettisoned from either the App Store or Google Play.

Speculation ramped up earlier this month after Apple’s Twitter account deleted all of its posts and an Apple executive in charge of the App Store, Phil Scheller, appeared to delete his account. Apple CEO Tim Cook, however, is still active on the platform along with several other Apple Twitter accounts.

And Twitter’s former head of safety Yoel Roth wrote for the New York Times earlier in November that Twitter not adhering to “Apple and Google’s guidelines would be catastrophic” for the app and would risk its “expulsion from their app stores.” Roth also claimed that when he recently “departed the company, the calls from the app review teams had already begun,” . . .

‘Amnesty’

Musk also posted a poll Wednesday that asked Twitter users if the company should “offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam?” About 72 percent of respondents voted yes in favor of amnesty. Hours later, Musk wrote that “amnesty begins next week,” without elaborating.

He also explained that the lack of a so-called moderation council was due to social and political activist groups who he said broke an agreement with him by telling firms to stop advertising on Twitter.

“A large coalition of political/social activist groups agreed not to try to kill Twitter by starving us of advertising revenue if I agreed to this condition,” Musk wrote last week. “They broke the deal,” he added.

After taking over, Musk restored a number of prominent accounts, including Project Veritas, Jordan Peterson, James Lindsay, and former President Donald Trump. Trump has not used his Twitter account since it was restored about a week ago.

The reinstatement of Trump’s account appears to have triggered the most left-wing backlash. The so-called “Stop Toxic Twitter” coalition, comprised of 60 activist groups, said that Musk needs to enforce the company’s rules before Musk’s takeover.

“Unless and until Musk can be trusted to enforce Twitter’s prior community standards, the platform is not safe for users or advertisers,” they said earlier this month.

Musk said new user signups to the social media platform are at an “all-time high” and said that more two million per day were coming in over the last seven days as of Nov. 16, up 66 percent compared to the same week in 2021. . .

Elon Musk Says He Has a Plan If Twitter Gets Kicked Off App Stores | Epoch Times

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Pulitzer winner Seymour Hersh claims US Navy behind Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion | New York Post

By Great Bloggers | February 13, 2023

WASHINGTON — Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh has alleged US Navy divers laid bombs that destroyed the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea last September, drawing a denial from the Pentagon Wednesday.

Hersh, who scooped journalism’s top award more than five decades ago for exposing the My Lai massacre of Vietnamese civilians by US troops in 1968, cited an unnamed source in reporting on Substack that Americans planted remotely triggered explosives that wrecked three of the four pipelines built to carry natural gas from Russia to Europe.

Hersh, 85, went on to claim that the Navy conducted the operation under the cover of a NATO maritime exercise, BALTOPS 22.

In a short statement, Pentagon spokesman Marine Corps Lt. Col. Garron J. Garn told The Post “the United States was not involved in the Nord Stream explosion,” reiterating the Defense Department’s response to the same question in October.

Swedish officials suspected the blasts were the result of “gross sabotage,” and some Western officials were quick to blame the attacks on Moscow as it blocked gas supplies to Europe in response to sanctions over last year’s invasion of Ukraine.

“These are deliberate actions, not an accident,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said at the time. “The situation is as serious as it gets.”

Pulitzer winner Seymour Hersh claims US Navy behind Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion | New York Post