The Cryptonite brand—like The Economist and the old Red Herring—is a news curator with a transparent worldview. We state our editorial perspective upfront, backing it with investigative reporting grounded in math, data, and science.
Recent studies by Media Research Center (MRC) and AllSides exposed Apple News’ in-house team systematically excluding 98–100% of stories from outlets they dislike. This cadre buries dissenting views while boosting ideological allies in prime “editor-curated” spots that drive most traffic. We sniffed Apple News biases and ditched our subscriptions on principle years ago—no surprises here.
"Some people have said that I shouldn’t get involved politically because probably half our customers are Republicans, so I just stay away from political stuff because that is personal for people. In weak companies, politics win. In strong companies, the best ideas win." —Steve Jobs
Sadly, Steve's impartiality is being shattered by the Apple News edit team under Tim Cook. FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson warned Cook in a public letter in February of potential consumer protection violations via "unfair or deceptive acts." He demanded swift corrective action, yet emphasized the FTC is "not the speech police"—which we applaud.
However, AllSides' Julie Mastrine says: "Apple would need substantial changes to reduce polarization and give its users a broader, more balanced view."
Apple News commits a form of digital identity theft by hijacking the formative space where young people build their sense of self. Art by Italian artist Alice Piscine.
How Apple News robs the youth of their identity
Apple News feeds young scrollers one-sided outrage, helplessness, and tribalism—wrapped in the long-trusted “neutral” Apple brand. It amplifies social media echo chambers, overriding nuanced personal views on top-of-mind issues like immigration, Big Tech censorship, climate, crime. The result: more anxiety, depression, and a sense of stolen identity.
So far, Apple News Editor-in-chief Lauren Kern (ex-New York Magazine, NYT Magazine) stands silent—and it's crickets from Apple corporate.
Cryptonite is on record saying one of the greatest AI fears is political and cultural manipulation. But AI can also be the great equalizer—it creates an environment where it’s much harder to hide from facts.
Border security & immigration Apple’s favored outlets framing: Emphasize humanitarian impacts, family separation, and systemic barriers. Grok’s evidence-based view: Strong enforcement correlates with lower crime, reduced fentanyl deaths, greater economic stability, and higher rule-of-law trust; orderly borders reduce societal stress and improve integration outcomes.
Election integrity Apple framing: Frame concerns as largely baseless “disinformation,” prioritizing maximum access. Grok evidence: Voter-ID requirements preserve trust without suppressing turnout; perceived fairness strongly predicts civic engagement and democratic legitimacy.
Second Amendment Apple framing: Public-health focus on mass shootings and calls for restrictions. Grok evidence: CDC/NIJ data show defensive gun uses outnumber criminal uses 3–5:1; armed self-defense links to lower victimization and higher personal security.
Transgender issues Apple framing: Emphasize inclusion and anti-discrimination. Grok evidence: Biology plus 80–90% pre-puberty desistance rates and post-transition regret/suicide data (Swedish/Dutch cohorts) show retained male advantages and elevated mental-health risks; sex-based spaces improve female safety and comfort.
Climate policy Apple framing: Urgency of emissions cuts and rapid renewable shift. Grok evidence: IPCC model vs. actual outcomes plus economic studies link aggressive net-zero policies to higher energy poverty, job loss, and reduced human flourishing, especially in developing nations.
COVID mandates Apple framing: Public-health compliance and natural-origin consensus. Grok evidence: Lab-leak now favored by intelligence; lockdowns/mandates produced measurable rises in depression, suicides, learning loss, and excess deaths.
Big Tech censorship Apple framing: Necessary protection against hate and disinformation. Grok evidence: Suppressing viewpoint diversity increases polarization and erodes trust; neutrality correlates with higher user satisfaction and lower echo-chamber effects.
Economic policy Apple framing: Corporate greed, supply issues, and progressive taxation/redistribution. Grok evidence: Excessive spending and printing drive inflation; supply-side approaches deliver faster GDP growth and poverty reduction (post-WWII tax cuts, 2021–2023 data).
Law enforcement Apple framing: Systemic bias requiring broad reforms. Grok evidence: Post-2020 crime spikes and sociology data show funding cuts increase homicides, victimization, and loss of community trust.
Culture & education Apple framing: Advocate critical race theory, DEI measures, while viewing parental rights laws as undermining teachers. Grok evidence: Mandatory DEI/CRT elements correlate with higher student division, anxiety, and parental disengagement; parental-rights focus predicts stronger family stability and child outcomes.
Grok summary
Full datasets favor suppressed outlets’ paths to human flourishing. Apple’s emotionally driven curation creates asymmetry.
Since Elon took over Twitter/X in 2022, bipartisan trust has gone up, up, up—despite the great emotional fears of his detractors.
The Twitter/X lesson on losing and regaining trust
All the abominations in the News department puts Apple at risk of major customer trust loss. Case in point: Twitter sale story. Most people don't realize Twitter was forced to sell because it lost customer trust through regular censorship and deplatforming of perceived political opponents.
“Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter is an existential threat to our democracy” Sen. Elizabeth Warren—who never left Twitter/X
“I’m leaving Twitter. Tried to stay, but the atmosphere has just become too toxic.” “I’m baaaack! Did you miss me?” (2025) Stephen King—horror author, he must have found Bluesky too blue.
“One good thing about Elon buying twitter is that I will FINALLY leave and stop being a complete menace to society on here.” Jameela Jamil—actress, who started menacing us again on X in 2025
At sale time, Twitter was failing—stock stagnant below IPO price of 10 years earlier (~$45 to ~$39). 🧐 Only TikTok was less trusted among social brands. Verge survey in 2021: just 28% of users would be disappointed if Twitter disappeared.😳
The irony? Desperate management sold Twitter to its nemesis—Elon Musk.
The real Twitter trust stats before and after Elon took charge
Pew shows X now supports free expression: 86% Dem-leaning + 89% GOP-leaning users feel free to share political views. This fueled growth: Q2 2022 to early 2026, monthly users up ~39% to ~557M—vs. Facebook’s ~5% to 3.07B, TikTok’s 90%+ to 1.9B. 🤷🏽♀️
We have always respected and admired your commitment to privacy-first, Steve Jobs’s legacy, and political impartiality.
Your now-exposed News team proves Apple shows no ideological independence or neutrality. Ms. Kern and her team are driven by narrative framing, contextual emphasis, and sourcing from legacy institutions with documented ideological homogeneity.
We are free-market maximalists, no matter how imperfect that view might be, so let thy will be done. But we are shocked to see practices that affront Steve Jobs’s proven antipolitical corporate philosophy.
In her 2018 New York Times profile, Ms. Kern stated: “We put so much care and thought into our curation. It’s seen by a lot of people, and we take that responsibility really seriously.” 🤔 The facts outlined above show this is simply not true.
If you wish for Apple News to continue as a propaganda machine—admit your biases and own it! Give people the transparent choice to avoid Apple’s biases, manipulation, and potential mental health effects—especially for youth whose worldviews are still developing.
As an editor who gave Steve Jobs a public forum—on the cover of Red Herring in his wilderness years, in my Wall Street Journal editorials during his comeback, and who chronicles his legacy in The Rap—I believe Apple News will dim the shine of the Apple brand Steve worked so hard to polish.
In that same NYT profile, the Grey Lady effused Ms. Kern is “quietly the most powerful figure in English-language media.” They were right. This is a very serious matter.
The proper course is to replace Ms. Kern and her team with Apple Intelligence. It’s the only legitimate way to run a “responsible” news aggregation service—and to avoid Apple going the way of the original Twitter brand.
To put it bluntly: Apple is now squarely in the identity theft business to soothe the ideological desires of a few. This statement is impossible to counter.
We know you’re a better man than this, Mr. Cook. Please 🙏🏼 do something now—before you lose the trust of the Apple faithful!
Steve Jobs maintained a decidedly “antipolitical” public posture and involvement to avoid alienating Apple’s diverse customer, employee, and stakeholder base. Apple’s official public policy page still states: “Apple does not make political contributions to individual candidates or parties, and we do not have a political action committee (PAC).”
Maniacally focused on what’s really important for Apple to win.
While Steve met privately with figures like President Obama—critiquing business-friendliness and immigration policies, pushing to attract manufacturing back to the U.S. (as Tim Cook does with Donald Trump)—he kept it private. He never aired partisan views in interviews, keynotes, or company comms.
His public persona stressed design, creativity, technology, and user experience—not ideology. Inside Apple, Steve drove innovation and product excellence over political maneuvering. Unlike today’s activist tech CEOs (and Apple News team), this built Apple into a near-universal brand without factional baggage. Tim Cook has followed, emphasizing “policy over politics'‘—until the introduction of Apple News.
Returning in 1997, Steve maniacally focused on “insanely great products” that “delight our customers”—turning near-bankrupt Apple into the world’s most valuable company.
Steve Jobs’s irritation with Barack Obama
Steve Jobs once sat next to President Barack Obama at a 2011 dinner party hosted by venture capitalist John Doerr at his Woodside, California, home. President Obama was there to discuss innovation and job creation with about a dozen Silicon Valley leaders, including Steve, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt (then Google CEO), and others.
Steve griped to host Doerr pre-event that the menu—cod, lentils, shrimp, cream pie with chocolate truffles—was “too snooty—far too fancy.” White House kept it because Obama liked cream pie. 🙄
Steve was characteristically blunt but constructive with the President. He opened by saying, “Regardless of our political persuasions, I want you to know that we’re here to do whatever you ask to help our country.” The conversation quickly turned to why so much manufacturing—especially for products like Apple’s—was happening in China rather than in the U.S. Jobs railed about the practical barriers: high costs, burdensome regulations, and, especially, the lack of skilled manufacturing engineers in America.
Then President Obama, sitting between Steve and a boyish-looking Zuck, saluting his updated slogan—"Yes we can’t."
At the time, Apple employed roughly 700,000 factory workers in China, supported by 30,000 engineers (not Ph.D.s, but people with practical skills trainable in community colleges or trade schools). “You can’t find that many in America to hire,” he expressed. “If you could educate these engineers, we could move more manufacturing plants here.” He argued for a crash program to train tens of thousands—plus green cards for foreign students with U.S. engineering degrees—to incentivize stateside production.
Obama pushed back, citing visa reform tied up in the stalled Dream Act due to Republican opposition. Steve later told biographer Walter Isaacson, “It infuriates me that the president kept explaining why things can’t get done”—an ironic twist to Obama’s famous (and now proven empty) slogan, “Yes we can!” (Read more.)
This underscores Steve’s passion for great ideas over politics. Pragmatic, impatient with bureaucracy, laser-focused on competitiveness—especially engineering/regulatory gaps favoring China. We 100% agree with Steve’s advice to Obama. It remains relevant today, making his early passing sadder still.
Apple cofounder Steve Jobs ran on the 80/20 rule (80% signal, 20% noise). Rumor has it, Elon Musk hits 100% signal—zero distractions.
Speaking of paying attention to seminal signals—that’s the business Cryptonite is in.
We avoid chatter, provide FACTS—We call outApple’s deception, keep Steve Jobs’s wisdom, and seek privacy-first. Pure signal.
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image: Street art in Civitacampomarano, Italy, May 2015 by Alice Piscine.
Fifty percent of U.S. teenage girls live in despair
We learned from Rikki Schlott's New York Post article (an Apple News-banned outlet) that 17-year-old Hallie Zilberman suspected growing up online devastated her generation. After surveying nearly 1,100 U.S. teenage girls about social media, she uncovered terrifying self-harm stats and deleted her TikTok and Instagram accounts.
Sadly yet encouragingly, Hallie's peers agreed: Social media robs time, happiness, well-being. We go further—social media + political manipulation (e.g., Apple News) robs teens of individual identity, their essence.
Helping young women and girls cross the threshold to hope must be America's #1 initiative.
Hallie found 6-in-10 feel overwhelmed daily, anxious, perfection-pressured; 48.6% considered self-harm in past six months. (Heartbreaking 💔 beyond words.)
“That’s basically 50% of girls in my classes, 50% at cafeteria lunch,” Hallie told The Post. “I’ve seen self-harm scars on wrists... friends hide mental health struggles. To parents, she pleads: “There’s a 50% chance that’s your kid right now.”
Most depressed Gen Z (under-25s) in US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand—no big English-speaking nations top 10.
Finland (1) happiest ninth year running; Nordics (Iceland 2, Denmark 3, Sweden 5, Norway 6, Netherlands 7) lead in happiness, trust, benevolence.
Other Top 10: Costa Rica (4)—Pura Vida!; Israel (8), Luxembourg (9), Switzerland (10).
Under-25s happier vs. 15-20 years ago in 85/136 countries—except North America, Australia, NZ, parts Western Europe.
Heavy social media use links to lower well-being, especially teen girls in English-speaking/Western Europe nations.
US teens average 4.8 hours/day scrolling.
Key to happiness: social connections, trust, mindful tech. But affluent English-speaking nations face youth “happiness crisis.”
Silicon Valley must own creating this social media madness. To Apple's credit (so far), it avoided the sector, prioritizing customer privacy over data exploitation.
Street mural in Roma, Italy, October 2017 by Alice Piscine.
Ms. Schlott reports Hallie says her life "has been infinitely better" since unplugging. "I've been more efficient with my work. I have more time to spend with family and friends," Hallie says. "I think kids who want to change their lives can make it happen—teenagers have agency."
Alice Piscine is an Italian street artist, illustrator, and set designer whose works are featured in this post and in galleries and museums in hundreds of cities around the world.
Friday’s Wall Street Journal ran an important article for entrepreneurs: “The Smartest Minds in AI Just Learned the World’s Most Valuable F-Word” by Ben Cohen. It argues that in the high-stakes AI race—where OpenAI and Anthropic have near-infinite technical capabilities—success hinges on focus (the ‘F-word’).
"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the things we haven't done as the things I have done. Innovation is saying no to 1,000 things." —Steve Jobs, cofounder, Apple, Pixar, 2008
The article spotlights Steve Jobs’s product and feature philosophy: more about saying no than yes. Epitomized in Apple Stores—four main devices (iPhone, Mac, iPad, Watch) on center tables, three versions each, handful of colors. Elegant simplicity collapses customer decision-making and boosts sales.
Product decision-making made easy.
The focus of Anthropic vs OpenAI
Anthropic excels via laser focus: targeting coders and enterprise (~80% customers) over broad consumers—clear direction for engineers.
OpenAI—ChatGPT consumer AI pioneer—spread thin on “side quests” (video tools, browser, hardware, ads). Facing competition, declared “code red,” now refocusing on business productivity, “agentic AI” (human-assisting bots), doubling down on Codex coding platform.
WSJ concludes: In AI’s expensive, existential race, focus delivers decisive edge. Anthropic gains ground; OpenAI pivots to catch up. Some consumer voices lament deprioritizing fun and creative use for enterprise.
Our top Apple product gripes
Talk about lack of focus, discipline, feature creep—Apple no longer practices what Steve Jobs preached. Risking an "F-Apple" Weekly Rap, here are our biggest product pet peeves:
👎🏼 Siri’s intrusive glowing-ring border Rainbow Liquid Glass edge triggers on “Hey Siri,” side button, or randomly—wakes screen, interrupts audio/calls, distorts view, and often glitches/freezes. Top visual annoyance of Apple Intelligence.
👎🏼 Apple Music’s promotional, tap-heavy UI Prioritizes algorithmic mixes, “New Music,” and curation over quick library/playlist access—takes extra taps to play your own stuff, feels like a billboard instead of a player.
👎🏼 Liquid Glass overload Translucent, blurry, padded, animated UI—icons shimmer, text loses contrast (eye strain), animations lag, screens feel cluttered and cartoony. Accessibility nightmare for many.
👎🏼 Battery drain + lag from AI features Constant Apple Intelligence, Live Activities, and animations cause faster drain, heat, stutters—especially on non-16 models. Freezes, choppy transitions, and “fried” performance common.
👎🏼 Extra steps in basic tasks Screenshots force AI editor dismiss; deeper Control Center/Settings; random overlays, summaries, Genmoji prompts; misfiring gestures. One-tap actions now need 2–3 steps.
👎🏼 Constant notification/AI interruptions Pop-ups, Dynamic Island overload, Visual Intelligence suggestions, and ‘helpful’ nudges make the phone proactive instead of passive. We miss the old distraction-free ‘just works’ iPhone.
What's up with this chaotic pile-on? Are Apple products now designed by committee where everyone throws in a feature to prove their worth? No one's counting taps to get what we want?
Continue reading this post for free, courtesy of The Cryptonite Weekly Rap.
