"Brand safety". Apple cultivates their image and don't want it damaged. Twitter isn't valuable enough as an advertising space to take a risk for. That is, they pulled twitter ads because they think advertising on Twitter isn't worth the price and might reduce the value of their brand.
The fact that Apple is more than willing to work with a violent repressive dictatorship is cool, but we won't advertise on Twitter because they are evil...
Brand protection isn’t a value judgement about the service. It’s the recognition that ad dollars are poorly spent if your ads end up next to damaging content.
That said, of course the us population has contradictory positions. It’s hundreds of millions of people.
We denounce dictators and oppression and champion human rights and democracy. Companies that work with oppressive rulers have tarnished brand names. For example: software companies that worked with the Saudis or CBP and ICE. Apple has determined that Twitter could cause brand reputation damage because Twitter is accused of having disinformation or hate speech on it.
On the other hand, Apple works cooperatively with the Chinese government to suppress human rights. The update to air drop and the separate icloud and app store as well as appearing to work closely with the CCP does not seem to be pro human rights.
So I think it's contradictory that there is no brand reputational damage for cooperation with a government accused of violations of human rights but there is for allowing Twitter on the App Store ostensibly because it is a threat to democracy. Maybe that changes as a result of people pointing this logic out, but I won't hold my breath. I don't think it's nuanced, I think it's straightforward. You can't be a champion of global human rights except where it is inconvenient. Or maybe the human rights and pro democracy stuff is all BS.
I think it should be noted that "brand safety" is entirely theoretical. It doesn't necessarily mean that anything actually happens. What it means is that certain people in Apple's marketing department believe that their ads being pictured next to things that they think people might not approve of might harm their image and possibly lead to a loss in sales. There is no proof that this will actually happen though. For all we know, the only solid reason is that their trendy cocktail party friends won't approve of them if their ads are next to something they don't like.
