kirklennon

I'm aware, but at the moment on stage, it wasn't possible for him to know the truth in the first place so it's not about whether we think De Niro was "telling the truth." He was speculating.

It is very easy for CEOs or upper management or middle management to pass down orders that are worded in a way that imply what they want workers to do without saying it in a legally binding way.

Seriously, just think through this. Be super conspiratorial if you want to. There's no upside for Apple as a company. There's no reason anybody in power would even be involved in the speech in the first place. It's a minor awards ceremony that effectively nobody watches. If it were a conscious decision, it would obvious piss off De Niro, which seems like an extra stupid idea.

What's more likely? A: Intentionally anger a big-name actor by trying to force him to change a speech that nobody was going to hear, or B: Someone accidentally sent the wrong final draft.

why is it the first conclusion that De Niro and many others came to?

He said it before he had any time to reflect on it or carefully choose his words to parse out the nuance we're discussing now.

Apple admitted they made a mistake with the teleprompter. We can only speculate why it happened.

We don't have any statement from Apple. "A source close to the film" said it was a mix-up with different versions of the draft and that Apple didn't know De Niro hadn't signed off on that one as the final version. The source anonymous to us, but not to Variety, and they judged the person credible.

If Apple wanted him to only talk about certain things during his speech they could’ve communicated that before he accepted their request for him to give a speech.

Apple never asked him to give a speech. This is an acceptance speech for an obscure, untelevised awards show. The winners are invited to speak when accepting it. De Niro worked with the producers/Apple on his acceptance speech. For some reason, the draft loaded on the teleprompter wasn't the version he planned on. There are many different reasons this could be.

If you're going to attribute an action to a company as a whole, then it at least needs to be a decision made by a high-level employee and not some peon. The idea that Apple decided to just unilaterally delete portions of his speech at the last minute, without his consent, is among the least plausible scenarios. Anybody with any actual authority at the company is smart enough to know how stupid that would be. The most likely scenario is pure mistake with multiple drafts in play; the next most likely is a nobody who grossly overstepped their bounds, made their bosses look bad, and has probably already been fired.

Apple did not produce or distribute the event. I think they'd be perfectly content with zero viewers. CODA won two Gotham Awards, including Troy Kotsur for best supporting actor. Did Apple talk about it then? No. What about when CODA won big at the Oscars? Apple dedicated two long paragraphs of the press release to talking about the other awards CODA won but the Gotham Awards are so irrelevant that they didn't even get a single throwaway mention.

Makes much more sense to me that DeNiro was telling the truth

Nobody ever said he was lying. He made a statement, live, based on his current understanding of the situation. Later, someone else offered a perfectly plausible explanation.

“Oops! We aCciDeNtLy cut out the part that might cause insurrection supporters to not watch our award show! Aww shucks our mistake increased our ratings.”

It's not a televised. It's an obscure awards show that almost nobody saw.

someone made a censored draft

I don't think we can quite say that. Speeches usually have a time limit. It would be perfectly normal to write more than you can actually say and then start cutting back or rewording parts to make it shorter. That's not "censorship." If you're cutting down an acceptance speech, the more off-topic stuff is naturally going to be looked at critically. I'd expect there to be multiple drafts with different portions cut out so it's not so much as a "full" verses "cut" speech but which version of cuts was the final version.

Variety reports that De Niro’s accusations regarding censorship have been denied by “a source close to the film,” who instead claims the incident was a miscommunication. The insider alleges that multiple versions of the speech had been created, and that both Apple and the filmmakers were unaware that De Niro had not approved the final draft. We have reached out to Apple and the Gotham Film & Media Institute to clarify the situation.

I can't rule out a dumb employee trying to make a unilateral change to a speech almost nobody would have known about otherwise, but a miscommunication over multiple drafts certainly strikes me as highly plausible, and I can also understand why the filmmakers would have been encouraging a draft that was more focused on the film than tangential contemporary political issues.

At this point it doesn't actually seem like they're proposing any specific changes at all. The draft changes some definitions in a way that Apple Pay is included as a "participant" and gives the Reserve Bank of Australia regulatory authority over it under the Payment Systems Regulation Act. Considering the fact that Australia is the country that first pushed the link tax (basically a way to make Facebook give money to Rupert Murdoch and friends just because), I'm not terribly optimistic.