‘Shareholders own it, which means that shareholders get the final say,’ said Jerry Bowyer, a consultant to shareholders
In 1984, Apple ran its now iconic Super Bowl ad, directed by Hollywood heavyweight Ridley Scott, in which a young female athlete with a sledgehammer destroys an enormous video screen from which “Big Brother” issues diktats to a cowed population that is seated in rows and dressed in gray prison attire.
It was an ad for the Macintosh computer, and an upstart challenge to the overwhelming dominance of Bill Gates’ computer software firm, Microsoft. Today, however, some say that a role reversal has taken place.
“Apple has become Big Brother,” Jeremy Tedesco, a senior attorney at the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), told The Epoch Times. “They’re stepping into Big Brother’s shoes.”
The ADF is representing shareholders who asked Apple to inform them about whether the company is using its dominant position in global communications to silence free speech and push a political agenda. This week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ruled against Apple’s management and green-lighted a shareholder proposal from the American Family Association (AFA) demanding that Apple clarify its policies for removing apps from its platform, amid allegations that its actions have been arbitrary and politically biased.
In January 2021, Apple grabbed headlines when it joined with Google in removing Parler, a social media app that permitted content that Apple called “dangerous,” from its platform. Parler never fully recovered and ultimately shut down in April 2023.
In November 2022, Elon Musk, who purchased the social media site Twitter, now called X, said in a post that Apple had ceased advertising on the site and “also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why.”
Mr. Musk, who has taken heavy criticism for opening the site up to a number of users—including former President Donald Trump, who had previously been banned—also posted a poll asking whether Apple should “publish all censorship actions it has taken that affect its customers.”
The AFA’s proposal is making a similar request.
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