Elon Musk is delaying Twitter’s paid verification to avoid Apple’s 30 percent cut

Twitter’s revamped Blue subscription might not be available as an in-app purchase on iOS when it eventually relaunches so that it can dodge Apple’s 30 percent cut of App Store purchases, according to Platformer. When the new Blue was briefly available earlier this month, you could only purchase it through Twitter’s iOS app. But while Elon Musk is publicly tweeting his displeasure with Apple, it appears he wants to avoid having to pay Apple’s fees.

Musk had said that the new Blue, which allows people to purchase a blue verification check mark, was set to relaunch on Tuesday after signups were paused following a wave of impersonators. But that launch has been delayed, Platformer says, and The Verge has also heard of the delay from a person with direct knowledge of the matter. Twitter employees have been told that there will be other changes to Blue, including a one-cent price increase from $7.99 to $8 and requiring phone number verification, Platformer reports.

Over the course of this month, Musk has ramped up his tweets targeting Apple. On November 18th, he criticized the App Store’s cut by calling it a “hidden 30% tax on the Internet.” And on Monday, he claimed that Apple, reportedly one of Twitter’s biggest advertisers, has “mostly” stopped advertising on the social network and that it has “threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store, but won’t tell us why.”

Apple hasn’t publicly acknowledged Musk’s tweets, but outsiders have speculated that actions like his mass layoffs that slashed teams responsible for content moderation, or as the decisions to bring back suspended accounts and former President Donald Trump could put Twitter at odds with App Store policies.