Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are cowards

Since X’s users started using Grok to undress women and children using deepfake images, I have been waiting for what I assumed would be inevitable: X getting booted from Apple’s and Google’s app stores. The fact that it hasn’t happened yet tells me something serious about Silicon Valley’s leadership: Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai are spineless cowards who are terrified of Elon Musk.

Here’s the relevant Apple App Store developer guideline: “Apps should not include content that is offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste, or just plain creepy.” Huh! How about that.

Here’s Google’s version of the same guideline, which is even clearer: “Apps that do not prohibit users from creating, uploading, or distributing content that facilitates the exploitation or abuse of children will be subject to immediate removal from Google Play. This includes all child sexual abuse materials.”

But booting X from these app stores for its flagrant violation of policy means upsetting Musk and the entire right-wing media ecosystem he controls through X — and with it, directly upsetting the clout-chasing content vampires who currently run the United States. Cook’s Apple has a massive dependency on China, and smartphones, computers, and chips are currently exempt from the tariffs on China. Cook can present Donald Trump with as many golden gifts as he wants, but those tariffs don’t have to stay that way.

Google’s Pichai is similarly weak. Trump has threatened Google numerous times over his placement in search results, and so far YouTube has managed to mostly avoid scrutiny over its content moderation policies because Pichai has been content to coddle Trump with promises that everything he does is the biggest thing in Google search history. Google also can’t risk upsetting Trump while AI policy remains deeply contested, and having an unhappy Musk influencing that policy is a nightmare of corruption.

This is the trap these men have gotten themselves into: They sold their principles for power, and now they don’t even control their own companies. Welcome to gangster tech regulation!

Apple and Google did not respond to requests for comment.

Less than five years ago, I sat through the interminable Epic v. Apple antitrust trial. Real heads will remember that Apple’s lawyers heavily implied that a naked bananaman called Mr. Peely was somehow inappropriate for court. This came after a week where Apple argued that an indie storefront that users could install via Epic was a problem because it hosted porny games, calling games on Itch.io “offensive and sexualized.”

You know what’s “offensive and sexualized,” you worthless fucking cowards? Nonconsensual AI-generated images of women in bikinis spreading their legs, and of children with so-called “donut glaze” on their faces — which, by the way, were being generated at a rate of one per minute. I’d also call that “offensive, insensitive, upsetting, intended to disgust, in exceptionally poor taste” and especially “just plain creepy”! Do you need a back brace to stand up straight, buddy? Because at this point, I am certain you haven’t got a single vertebra.

Hey, does anyone else remember when Tumblr got booted from the App Store over pornographic images of children? I guess the real problem was that Tumblr wasn’t owned by Musk, not its violation of App Store policy. Whoopsie!

It is genuinely unbelievable to me that I wasted hours of my actual life on a court case where Apple explained it needed total control of its App Store to protect its users. Total control of the App Store was Apple’s main argument against antitrust enforcement: The company insisted that its monopolistic control of what users could install on their phones was essential to create a walled garden where it could protect children from unsafe content.

Does Google have the same problem with its app store, Google Play? Of course it does, and of course it has made all the same arguments as Apple, although it does allow sideloading apps on Android. But it still hasn’t enforced its rules and pushed X to alternative app stores. Why? Hey Google, show me the photo of Sundar Pichai giggling with Elon Musk at Donald Trump’s inauguration!

The only consolation here is that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg almost certainly has steam coming out of his ears. Remember when Apple yanked Meta’s App Store enterprise certificate because it was taking too much data? Ah yes, those were the days. At this point, it kinda seems like Alex Roman wasn’t the only Apple witness brazenly lying on the stand.

I never want to hear any moral grandstanding from these boys ever again. The next time Tim Cook says “privacy is a human right,” the only possible response is to laugh in his face. I mean, Apple and Google are fine distributing an app that has created an undressed image Grok made of Renee Nicole Good, the mother who was shot by ICE in Minneapolis. How do you plan to defend getting rid of the ICEBlock app while allowing X to generate degrading images of a woman ICE killed? Can Apple and Google even identify their values beyond their commitment to “shareholder value”? What’s your fucking endgame here, guys?