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The tech giant Apple has declined the social media site Parler’s request to be re-listed on the company’s App Store, Bloomberg News reports.
*APPLE DENIES PARLER RE-ENTRY TO APP STORE AFTER RECENT REVIEW
— Emma Kinery (@EmmaKinery) March 10, 2021
Parler was kicked off the App Store and Google Play Store in the wake of the Jan 6 riot on Capitol Hill by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. The website was widely accused of facilitating conversations which helped lead to the incident.
The company was given the option to develop methods of tackling hateful and violent speech on their platform if they wanted to be relisted, prompting the company to engage in corporate restructuring.
The company severed relationships with seven workers, mostly contractors, and developed a new terms of service in order to appease the big tech giants. The changes were apparently not enough to warrant re-entry onto the App Store, however.
“After having reviewed the new information, we do not believe these changes are sufficient to comply with App Store Review guidelines,” Apple wrote to Parler’s Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff last month. “There is no place for hateful, racist, discriminatory content on the App Store.”
“In fact, simple searches reveal highly objectionable content, including easily identified offensive uses of derogatory terms regarding race, religion and sexual orientation, as well as Nazi symbols,” Apple continued. “For these reasons your app cannot be returned to the App Store for distribution until it complies with the guidelines.”
The decisions made by Google and Apple to purge Parler from their application stores followed by Amazon’s decision to kick them off their web hosting servers sparked criticism from critics of big tech, who have argued that these companies have too much power over online discourse.
Apple has been accused of hypocrisy with regard to its decision. Evidence has shown that YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter were the primary platforms where rioters planned their storming of the Capitol. None of these applications have been purged by either Apple or Google, the latter of which owns YouTube.
Parler has gone back online, however, and can still be found on search engines.
