Musk Threatens 'Immediate' Legal Action Against Apple Over Alleged Antitrust Violations (cnbc.com) 111
Elon Musk has threatened Apple with legal action over alleged antitrust violations related to rankings of the Grok AI chatbot app, which is owned by his AI startup xAI. From a report: "Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation. xAI will take immediate legal action," Musk wrote in a post on his social media platform X. Apple declined to comment on Musk's threat. "Why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your 'Must Have' section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps? Are you playing politics?" Musk said in another post.
Musk is a victim (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly the richest man in the world is the victim here.
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Including Bill Maher :D
Re: Musk is a victim (Score:2)
Ha ha ha ha!!
Re:Musk is a victim (Score:5, Informative)
What does his wealth have to do with Apple's ethics or compliance with antitrust law?
Are you assuming his claim is true? He didn't get rich telling the truth. Three different AI apps have reached #1 this year. Deepseek, Perplexity, and GPT.
Re:Musk is a victim (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe Apple is downgrading Grok because of its Nazi, misogyny rantings.
Sucks to control a POS AI.
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Maybe Apple is downgrading Grok because of its Nazi, misogyny rantings.
This. All of this. But the drug-addled man-child sociopath cold never accept this.
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And are we assuming that any of the trillion dollar club got there by being consumer oriented?
You basically just gave a good reason Musk might be onto something.
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I made no assumptions. I simply asked a question. You went straight to class warfare and assumed he's lying, because he's rich. Maybe he is, and maybe he isn't -- if it goes to trial, the court will decide. Until then, the question stands: What does his wealth have
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No. He didn't "go straight to class warfare". You did.
He just said Musk got where he is by lying.
He didn't say Musk was lying because he was rich, which would be class warfare. He said Musk got rich by lying, which isn't.
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People that wealthy have stepped over a lot of dead bodies, sometimes literally. Musk, with his self driving killers, literally. They also have stripped all their acquired wealth from their employees. Lying is such a little thing compared to what they really do. So yeah, wealth does have something to do with it.
In Musk's cases he lies a lot, too. I mean A LOT. His past is littered with lies about his products and companies.
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You went straight to class warfare and assumed he's lying, because he's rich.
Class warfare never stops, because money never sleeps.
What does his wealth have to do with Apple's ethics or compliance with antitrust law?
They have a lot to do with veracity.
Re:Musk is a victim (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Musk is a victim (Score:2)
That's irrelevant to any argument being made, no matter who makes it. That's why it's an ad-hominem -- it means that you've made a logical error in your own argument.
And if we're really being honest here, your own (non) argument itself may be without merit without even getting to your logical error because you're almost certainly just injecting your own personal bias into it. People tend to lap up whatever the fuck they want to hear and treat it as the truth without hesitation. Only a few hours ago some der
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Musk is a victim (Score:2)
This doesn't invalidate the testimony of the witness. If it did, the judge would have stricken it from the record and instruct the jury to disregard it. That is only done if it can be conclusively proven that the witness lied, such a admitting to doing so.
Instead, this helps the jury decide whether THEY believe the witness is being truthful, which THEY may do even if the witness has been impeached and has proven to have been lying repeatedly, because that fact does not prove that they're lying about what th
Re: Musk is a victim (Score:2)
s/dinning/finding/
Re:Musk is a victim (Score:5, Insightful)
Ad Hominem would be saying "well Musk is a gross weirdo with a breeding fetish and why would you want to agree with a gross weirdo like that?"
But showing that Musk is an unreliable source **because he has been unreliable in the past** isn't ad hominem at all. The argument isn't about tearing down Musk as a person as a proxy for tearing down his argument; it's about saying "look, Mr Musk, you're asking us to take you at your word that you're the victim of illegal actions by Apple but your word hasn't historically been worth a whole lot."
We could agree that IF what Musk is saying is true, Apple's behavior sounds sketchy, but if we can't agree that Musk is telling the truth (and right now the validity of his claim hangs on his own credibility) then we can't draw any conclusions about Apple's behavior.
Re:Musk is a victim (Score:4, Insightful)
I think we fundamentally agree on the fact that we can't draw any conclusions about Apple's behavior (which is the point I wanted to reach in any case), but I want to split some hairs here to explain my line of thinking and show why his argument is still valid, even if we can't be sure that it is sound (because he is an unreliable source). The argument he is making can be roughly broken down like this:
1. If Apple is giving preferential treatment to OpenAI in its App Store listings, then Apple is engaging in an anti-trust violation.
2. Apple is giving preferential treatment to OpenAI in its App Store listings.
3. Therefore: Apple is engaging in an anti-trust violation.
This is a perfectly reasonable and valid (though not necessarily sound) argument. Dismissing the entire argument simply because Musk is an unreliable source would be ad hominem by definition. However, I think what you're trying to get at is that it is NOT ad hominem to question the 2nd premise's factuality on the grounds that the source of this premise is unreliable. I totally agree with you, and of course if the 2nd premise is false, the conclusion is not supported by the argument.
So, whether or not the poster above was engaging in ad hominem depends heavily on whether they intended to ignore the entire argument because it came from Musk, or were simply attacking the 2nd premise because Musk is an unreliable source. In retrospect I think I have convinced myself by breaking this down that you're right; it was uncharitable of me to assume that it was not the intention of the poster above to attack the 2nd premise of the argument. (You could also suggest that the first premise is not legally true- I don't possess the legal knowledge to be sure one way or the other but I think it would be charitably reasonable to accept it as true for sake of argument.)
Nevertheless, that leaves us at a stage where Musk could be right- but we would need facts from Apple to know one way or the other. If he's so sure, he can go ahead and sue / subpoena them for their records.
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No, it's not "perfectly reasonable and valid", because it's wrong. No matter your pseudo-logical verbiage. It's not even a fallacy, it's just wrong.
Giving preferential treatment is not against anti-trust laws.
Giving preferential treatment, _if_ you benefit from it _and if_ you're big enough to move the market, is. The latter, for Apple, in the US at least, sure. The former, unless OpenAI and all the others paid up Apple, and xAI said no, then no.
In any case, just "giving preferential treatment" is no anti-t
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Giving preferential treatment, _if_ you benefit from it _and if_ you're big enough to move the market, is. The latter, for Apple, in the US at least, sure. The former, unless OpenAI and all the others paid up Apple, and xAI said no, then no.
That doesn't follow. There are other ways Apple could benefit by keeping down Grok. They have their own AI investments [apple.com], for example.
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Thank you, Captain Obvious. Indeed giving preferential treatment to your own wares is a clear case of benefiting from it.
Last I checked, though, OpenAI, or any of the other AI apps that were made available on the app store and rank above xAI, are not, in fact, part of Apple.
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Last I checked, though, OpenAI, or any of the other AI apps that were made available on the app store and rank above xAI, are not, in fact, part of Apple.
https://openai.com/index/opena... [openai.com]
Google is free to use.
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But 2. requires BELIEVING the lying Musk, so we can reasonably discount that without further proof.
Something besides Musk telling us it is so, because he is known to LIE excessively.
And dismissing the argument because Musk is an unreliable source is NOT ad hominem by definition. It is noting the characteristics of the person saying the "truth" as someone who lies EXESSIVELY. And thus being quite skeptical of what is said.
If you said he was smelly that would be ad hominem. Or ugly and short. Both ad hominem.
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Wow! Very strong reasoning there. You did forget one aspect of the situation: Apple has been known to employ shady tactics in the past, so you also have to wonder about Apple's credibility here as much as Musk's credibility.
But otherwise, you argument was excellent.
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Sorry but him having lied in the past is NOT ad ad hominem attack against his person or the claim - it is simply true AND brings relevant information.
Since he is known for LYING completely MULTIPLE TMES in the past, one MUST take that into account with his current statements.
Failure to do so is stupid. I guess that means you.
Re:Musk is a victim (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd ask what does Apple's ethics or compliance with antitrust law have to do with anything? It's only because Elon Musk claims it.
Why does Elon Musk feel entitled to have his products endorsed in a "Must Have" section of another company's store? In what universe is Twitter or Grok a "Must Have"?
Re:Musk is a victim (Score:5, Interesting)
Why does Elon Musk feel entitled to have his products endorsed in a "Must Have" section of another company's store? In what universe is Twitter or Grok a "Must Have"?
This is the real question. Does Apple (or Google, etc.) have a legal responsibility to present app offerings in its store in a fair and non-arbitrary way? The EU has the DMA, but there's no such law in the US. There are anti-trust laws, but they are very broad and vague.
Re:Musk is a victim (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't a "Must Have" section inherently discriminatory? It only exists to discriminate (positively) and users understand that. Not all discrimination is unfair.
Musk isn't really arguing that the App Store doesn't present his apps unfairly, his complaint is that the App Store DOES present his apps fairly. He asserts that he's personally entitled to special treatment by having his apps promoted in a discriminatory list.
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He knows because (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation.
He knows because no matter how many five star rankings his bot army gives the app, it never rises above being a gigantic #2.
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"... it never rises above being a gigantic #2."
Insightful in so many ways.
#1 (Score:5, Interesting)
so apple's own AI product is not ranked by apple as #1...
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I mean there's whole shareholder lawsuits about Apple's AI product, I doubt even they could reality distort that hard to claim it's #1.
"Elon Musk is a tool and a blowhard" (Score:3, Insightful)
Many headlines could just be replaced with this.
Threaten = lie (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone is breaking the law, you do not threaten to sue them, you actually sue them.
If you dislike what someone is doing even though it is totally legal, you call a press conference and threaten to sue, all the while claiming your product is the best in the world and should be #1 even though it is not.
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If someone is breaking the law, you do not threaten to sue them, you actually sue them.
When the law is on your side, typically you have your lawyer send them a "cease and desist" letter or a letter demanding prompt payment to avoid a lawsuit. But, as you said, you don't hold a press conference. Being a blowhard before you win in court makes you look like you don't have the law on your side.
Re: Threaten = lie (Score:2)
Who held a press conference?
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Twitter. he gets way more audience forcing everybody to see his posts than he ever could from a press conference.
Re: Threaten = lie (Score:2)
Who did he force?
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What is his audience supposed to do?
Half of the people he forces to see his posts will hate him for this.
The other half will just bitch and moan on Twitter. Oh.. maybe THAT'S it. A slight bump in Twitter engagement?
Lol. He's not actually going to sue because I'm pretty sure Apple can rank things however they like in their store. Even if they can't I'm pretty sure they have algos to do it for them, so it's 'clean hands'.
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If someone is breaking the law, you do not threaten to sue them, you actually sue them.
When the law is on your side, typically you have your lawyer send them a "cease and desist" letter or a letter demanding prompt payment to avoid a lawsuit. But, as you said, you don't hold a press conference. Being a blowhard before you win in court makes you look like you don't have the law on your side.
There's a lot of assumptions going on here. While I agree that both of your points allude to what is commonly considered a best practice in legal matters, it is by no means the de-facto ONLY strategy to employ. Legal challenges don't happen because of the principle of a matter; they happen for a tangible reason: between companies that reason is typically money. The goal of a lawsuit is not to win the lawsuit, it's to obtain something you want; the lawsuit is just a means to an end, an extension of business
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How is his complaining going to get his app listed higher?
If I were Apple, I would say "Screw you." In legalese, of course.
Dare him to sue, and countersue for damages of the frivolous lawsuit and "big political stink" damaging Apple's reputation.
He has no ground to stand on, he is being a whiny little bitch.
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Re: Threaten = lie (Score:2)
He graduated from TrumpU.
Re: Threaten = lie (Score:2)
This is assuming rational behavior, which is a stretch here.
Nerd with app rages at App Store... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lifelong fan of Cory Doctorow (Score:2)
I'm not a fan of billionaire blowhard behavior, nor of big-tech monopoly-by-walled-garden and malicious compliance. I'm looking forward to seeing if we (somehow?) manage to get our well-intended but deeply flawed, elite-controlled systems under control, or if we get some kind of sci-fi dystopia nightmare. The next two decades should be interesting, for those of us aloof enough to observe things without crashing out.
It's bots all the way down... (Score:1)
Twitter/X is 76% bots. So...
Because upranking a chatbot (Score:3)
It’s really that simple.
This is on par with (Score:2)
demands from Trump's admin that he be given the Nobel peace prize.
Favoritism (Score:2)
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Musk has fallen out of favor with Trump so others are stepping in to fill the gap. But there's no loyalty. The most recent company to bribe him will be the one that gets favorable treatment on any given day.
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Man do I ever remember that time Obama wore a tan suit or asked for an orange juice with his breakfast instead of coffee. Good times.
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I'd have impeached his ass for that.
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'member when Clinton had an entirely consensual affair with an intern, used legal jargon to avoid admitting having sex with her in court, and subsequently got his ass impeached?
And this was a scandal that the media covered incessantly for years as if it was actually the worst thing ever?
It would be so nice to be back to that level of petty politics again...
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That episode was bullshit. As if he were the first dude to get his dick sucked by an intern in the Oval. He was just the first that a fucking special prosecutor dragged in front of a fucking public court for an entirely unrelated case, and used that as a political weapon.
It doesn't excuse his perjury, but frankly, he never should have been put in a fucking situation where he felt pressured to perjure himself in that way. That was dirty fucki
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Oh I'm not saying I supported the impeachment, I just wish that was the level of what-makes-for-a-scandal today rather than constant lawbreaking, building concentration camps, running smear campaigns against immigrants and persecuting them, using executive power to solicit bribes from large businesses, practically random use of tariffs for no sane reason, sending troops into cities that are having largely peaceful protests against the will of the states and city governments concerned, and so on, being consi
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Free speech must be defended /s (Score:1)
So heâ(TM)s going to sue because he doesnâ(TM)t like the *editorial* recommendations?
Iâ(TM)m glad the self proclaimed defender of free speech is defending free speech.
Hmmm. (Score:3, Informative)
Is X number 1 in the world got news? No.
Should it be? No.
Is that relevant as to whether Grok is any good? No.
Is Grok any good? No.
Now that's cleared up...
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Maybe a little bit worse... but only a little.
His Little empire is collapsing (Score:3)
He tried to use AI to hype his company in stocks long enough to get the money out of them but nobody is buying it because you can't get the engineers there's too much competition for them and he no longer has the mystique that would draw engineers to him automatically.
So what he is doing here is he's trying to force Apple to do business with him so he can pump his stock again. This is especially important because although he will never face criminal charges, he's too rich for that, he is finally facing investor lawsuits. And those lawsuits will make it harder for him to cash out his companies and dump the dead stock on to investors like he is planning to.
It was all supposed to go so well for him. He was going to do the cybertruck promising a super cheap high range electric truck that would have been worth hundreds of billions. It was all a lie but the lie was supposed to become obvious after he got that 55 billion dollar payback age and sold out.
Then some lawyers noticed that if they sued him over that pay package they would get a percentage based on the size of the pay package as a kind of bounty. So they sued and won and that completely screwed up his time line.
The Cybertruck came out and it was a complete dud because of course it was. He doesn't have self-driving cars that was just another pump and dump. And he can't get on the AI bandwagon.
He'll be fine of course. We do not punish the ruling class. No spilling the blood of Kings here. But the poor boy is probably never going to be a trillionaire. Now it will probably be Mark Zuckerberg or Peter Thiel that gets the crown.
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"Well, I mean, they did make an overture to settle the case, and for a very large sum of money. Now, it was a fraction of the verdict, but the condition of the settlement was that it would be secret. And my clients were not interested in a secret settlement. They knew that this was a case and a cause that was bigger tha
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Errr I like that fantasy but unfortunately it's far from reality. While Tesla isn't doing well (at least selling cars), there is no indication that X, Grok, Starlink, SpaceX or anything else that makes his ginormous empire is in any way collapsing.
Even with Tesla stock drops his net worth is on the rise.
So let's go through the list (Score:1)
Tesla is going to collapse because it is a car company no matter how many times musk says it isn't and it can't sell cards profitably without government subsidies. Those subsidies are gone now.
Europe and South America and Africa are all going to tell musk to go pound sand because he has shown himself to be a nationa
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I very much doubt that. In the past I have spent quite some time going over the financials of Tesla. My memory is bad, but I recall that the subsidies were way, way less than the actual net profit.
News App? (Score:2)
To be fair (Score:5, Interesting)
As of this morning, the top five apps in the Must-Have section are:
TikTok
Tinder
Duolingo
YouTube
Bumble
In the productivity category, ChatGPT is #1 and Grok is #2. Microsoft and Google apps dominate the chart. On the All Apps Top Charts, ChatGPT is #1, followed by TeaOnHer Dating Advice, Tea Dating Advice, Threads, and then Grok.
Seems to me that if Elon wanted to get an AI app on top of the charts, it needs to be a bullshit, time-waster.
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Less than a snowballs chance in hell I would have any Musk software on anything I own.
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My best day for a long time was when I got booted from Twitter permanently .
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Thing is I can be extremely offensive if I need to, and what I said to these people was VERY offensive, but I get a laugh out of it every time I think of it.
I am on FB (vis the web) for family reason but I typically spend less than 1 minute a day on it. I have ad blockers, etc etc etc but it's still a s-hole.
I gained many hours a week having dumped social media etc. Get to read, chase the GrandKids around with water pistols, tea
Feel some sympathy for him (Score:5, Interesting)
App store rankings are an important part of the valuation for xAI.
Don't forget he sold a lot of Tesla stock to buy Twitter. So much that he had to poach a bunch of Tesla talent and GPUs in order to build xAI, then have it buy Twitter, then use Tesla to pump the valuation further by integrating Grok, all so he could get Tesla to buy xAI for a really inflated valuation and give him even more stock.
But if people aren't directed to download X and Grok in the App store then he won't get as much new Tesla stock as he wants.
Why would Tim Cook be so mean to Musk??
Cry harder (Score:2)
If Musk can deliberately change Twitter to boost right-wing lies while deboosting facts, why can't Apple do what it wants in its store?
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Twitter isn't analogous in this case.
It's long since been a tenet of US law that once you're a large player in a market, you, in fact, no longer get to do what you want if it affects your competitors.
If Twitter turning into a right-wing cesspool had damaged his competitors, it would face regulatory scrutiny as well. I imagine realistically, it only helped them.
Who hurt him this time? (Score:1)
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Just desperate to keep his name in the press now that he fell out of favor with the other giant baby.
It's downranked for a reason (Score:2)
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The Nazification fine-tuning is really ham-handed. It feels pretty gross.
Aren't recommendations paid for? (Score:2)
I always assumed that the "Must Have" designation was a paid promotional spot, just like recommendations are on every other storefront. So, maybe cough up the dough to claim it?
And Xitter is listed as a "news app"? If so it must be severely mis-categorized. No wonder it can't take the #1 spot.
Obligatory joke? (Score:2)
It would be nice if the corporate cancers would destroy each other.
Too bad that isn't how it works in the real world. One always eats the other and just becomes more annoying.
And how does all of this help the customers? You mean the "victims" formerly known as "customers"? Why would anyone pay any attention to them?
I think the only thing propping up to Tesla (Score:1)
Advice from Ellison (Score:2)
Irony (Score:2)
"Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store,...."
Let me re-write that slightly.
"Elon is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any candidate besides Trump to reach #1 in the White House,...."
Fuck off Elon.
Cry wolf some more (Score:2)
What he did was cry like a child in public trying to get Apple to do what he wants without actually filling a court case that he knows he will lose. There is no legal enforcement for a "must have" list. It's not a ranking of apps.
Elon is just a petulant little baby.
Not a News App (Score:2)
Twitter is not, now or at anytime in the past or future, a source or purveyor of news. And the only reason Grok is as high on the list as it is is because of artificial downloads and reviews.
You can't even make this shit up (Score:2)
Elon Musk Says Grok Will Be Fixed After Chatbot Sided With Sam Altman In Spat Over Potential OpenAI Lawsuit [forbes.com].
It must suck to work at xAI, you actually build a decent pretty LLM, and then your drugged out boss repeatedly getting pissed off when it calls out his bullshit and insists that you lobotomize it.
This can't be Reich. (Score:1)