Apple used its immense clout, including in the entertainment sector, to successfully kill proposed legislation in Louisiana that would have required it to allow developers who market their apps on the App Store to use an alternative payment system by threatening to cancel the making of a Will Smith film in the state.
The allegations which date back to 2021 have now surfaced in a new report by The Wall Street Journal.
Lawmakers in the state were keen on approving a bill that would have allowed app developers to use alternative payments systems, circumventing Apple’s app store.
Apple charges developers a fee to have their apps available to iPhone users for download from its app store, and reportedly perceived that bill as a threat to its revenue.
An Apple employee is believed to have told Tanner Magee, a senior lawmaker in the Louisiana House of Representatives, that if he went ahead with the app store bill, Apple would pull the plug on production of the film “Emancipation”.
The historical drama in which Smith plays “Whipped Peter” — the ex-slave whose scarred back was infamously photographed in 1863 — was filmed in Louisiana between July-August 2021. Apple reportedly paid US$130 million (A$193.6 million) to acquire the rights to the film.
The Apple rep is reported to have made it known to Magee that the company would relocate the filming of the movie, leading to a blow to the local economy that was recovering from the pandemic.
“He basically said that if we didn’t kill the bill, he’d kill the movie and hurt our economy,” Magee told the Journal.
An Apple spokesperson denied any threat was made. “We always operate with the highest standards of integrity, and allegations that we have not in this instance are false,” the Apple spokesman told the newspaper.
The allegations come at a time when Apple, more recently, was reported to keen on killing another piece of proposed legislation whereby Louisiana lawmakers sought to require the company to force its smartphone users to verify their age.
Earlier this year, Kim Carver, a freshman state legislator, told the Journal that Apple lobbyists deluged him with “panicked” text messages when they learned that he would include the age verification provision in a proposed bill geared toward safeguarding children from the pitfalls of social media and tech.
Louisiana was one of the first states to attempt to force Apple to age-verify users of its devices.
Child safety advocates have argued that Apple and Google should be responsible for age verifications, and not just app developers, with firms such as Meta agreeing that the onus of age verifications lay with Apple and Google.
According to Carver’s proposal, companies that failed to make “reasonable efforts” to verify the ages of their users would face substantial fines.
But Apple reacted furiously to the legislation, accusing Carver of including a “poison pill from Meta.”
“We had the bill pass unanimously on the house floor [without the provision that would have obligated Apple],” said Carver.
In Oz, South Australia is looking at becoming the first state in the country to possibly ban children under the age of 14 from having social media accounts. The state would also require parental consent for children aged 14 and 15 who want to use social media accounts.
