Apple has followed Google’s steps to purge conservative-friendly social media site Parler from its App Store, after it missed a 24-hour deadline to introduce adequate measures to “prevent the spread of posts inciting violence.”
While the Alphabet-owned tech behemoth suspended Parler from its main app platform right away, Apple Inc. issued a symbolic ultimatum on Friday, giving the company 24 hours to impose content-policing.
“Parler has not taken adequate measures to address the proliferation of these threats to people’s safety. We have suspended Parler from the App Store until they resolve these issues,” Apple said in a brief statement on Saturday night.
We have always supported diverse points of view being represented on the App Store, but there is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity.
The push to choke off Parler comes in the wake of the US Capitol protest-turned-riot, at a time when Twitter, Facebook and other social-media giants are purging the accounts of President Donald Trump and his supporters, essentially silencing speech that deviates from mainstream talking points.
Apple and Google, whose operating systems dominate the smartphone world, were pressured to remove Parler from their app stores for violating their policies on incitement to violence by online activist group Sleeping Giants. The group was also instrumental in getting Gab, another Twitter-alternative platform, booted from their app stores in 2017.
Parler’s user base has grown exponentially in recent months amid rising anti-Trump censorship by such mainstream platforms as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The fledgling platform was adding thousands of users per minute at some points this fall, up from a rate of 2,000 a day prior to last June. Another wave of migration followed this week, with Wednesday’s violence in Washington being used as a pretext to ban conservatives.
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