Tim Cook has a pretty simple explanation for why Apple removed most of the podcasts and an app from Infowars founder and hatemonger Alex Jones from its directories, setting in motion a chain of events that ended in the conspiracy theorist being fully or partially banned from virtually every major web platform: Everyone can agree Jones is terrible.
In an interview with Vice News Tonightâs Elle Reeve, Cook said that getting rid of Jonesâ content was a matter of content curation and reassuring users that humans were actually paying attention to what ends up in Appleâs content ecosystem. He also denied the company was responding to any kind of political pressure or that he had ever coordinated his response with executives from other tech companies.
âWhat users want from us and what weâve always provided them is a curated platform,â Cook told Reeve. âWe think that what the user wants is someone that does review these apps, someone that does review the podcasts, someone that on like Apple news, where a human is selecting the top stories. And thatâs what we do.â
âWe donât take a political stand,â Cook continued. âWeâre not leaning one way or the other. You can tell that from the stuff on the App Store and in podcasts, etc., youâll see everything from very conservative to very liberal. And thatâs the way I think it should be.â
Pressed on the exact moment he decided Jones should go, Cook replied, âYou know, I donât really get into a singular kind of event. But I think thereâs enough there that reasonable people could agree that if youâre going to curate, that that should be off.â
âWe have an app called Safari,â Cook added. âSafari is the app for you if you want to look at anything thatâs on the free and open Internet thatâs not on our app store.âÂ
Cook, the CEO of a company valued at over a trillion dollars, has a habit of denying that Apple plays politicsâand despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, that he doesnât really either. It is fair to say that the companyâs decision to deplatform Jones was inherently both a business decision and political statement, allowing Apple to position itself as taking a stance at the same time other companies like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter were all seemingly worried about potential consequences and treading on eggshells on anything Infowars-related. But given that all of those companies took Appleâs move as an opportunity to finally just rip off the band-aid, and only consequences for Jones ensued, it is probably also fair to say that fear of some kind of backlash was a little exaggerated.
Elsewhere in the interview, Cook criticized other tech companies for collecting large amounts of user data under misleading pretenses. The CEO called for regulation, adding, âThe narrative that some companies will try to get you to believe is âIâve got to take all of your data to make my service better.â Well, donât believe that. Whoeverâs telling you thatâitâs a bunch of bunk.â (Note that a recent congressional hearing featuring executives from six tech giants including Apple, none were willing to go so far as to call for financial penalties or sweeping overhaul like the European Unionâs General Data Protection Regulation.)
Cook also defended Apple against accusations that its business in China could lead to it becoming a de facto partner to state censors, denying that government officials could more easily access user data stored in-country or that its encryption standards are any different there.
