U.S. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Edward Markey (D-Mass.), and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), in a letter to Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai:

We write to ask that you enforce your app stores’ terms of service against X Corp’s (hereafter, “X”) X and Grok apps for their mass generation of nonconsensual sexualized images of women and children. X’s generation of these harmful and likely illegal depictions of women and children has shown complete disregard for your stores’ distribution terms. Apple and Google must remove these apps from the app stores until X’s policy violations are addressed.

It’s gratifying to see three Senators (all Democrats, it’s worth noting) pressing for action. That it’s only three Senators is pitiful.

Turning a blind eye to X’s egregious behavior would make a mockery of your moderation practices. Indeed, not taking action would undermine your claims in public and in court that your app stores offer a safer user experience than letting users download apps directly to their phones. This principle has been core to your advocacy against legislative reforms to increase app store competition and your defenses to claims that your app stores abuse their market power through their payment systems.

Both Apple and Google have also recently demonstrated the ability to move quickly to moderate apps from the app stores. For example, under explicit pressure, and perhaps threats, from the Department of Homeland Security, your companies quickly removed apps that allowed users to lawfully report immigration enforcement activities, like ICEBlock and Red Dot. Unlike Grok’s sickening content generation, these apps were not creating or hosting harmful or illegal content, and yet, based entirely on the Administration’s claims that they posed a risk to immigration enforcers, you removed them from your stores.

The continued availability of X and Grok from the App Store and Google Play leads me to believe Cook and Pichai are more afraid of incurring the wrath of Elon Musk—and, by extension, Donald Trump—than they are of knowingly, if unwillingly, distributing apps that create, host, and display “nonconsensual sexualized images of women and children.”

Keeping X and Grok after removing ICEBlock undermines Apple’s and Google’s assertions that they apply their guidelines without fear or favor, and weakens their argument that the app review process makes customers safer. If customers can download apps containing harmful and illegal content but can’t download apps that keep them safe, what’s the point of a singular app store or a “rigorous” review process? Either Apple and Google pull X and Grok from their stores or they admit the guidelines are merely convenient fabrications for exerting control.