Parler, a conservative social media app, has gotten into new trouble. Shortly after being turned down by the Google Play Store, it got suspended from Apple’s App Store as well. If you don’t know about it, the app is the abode of former President of the USA, Donald Trump, and many high-profile conservatives in the days leading up to the fresh capital riots.
The policymakers of the App Store have clarified further that there is no place for threats and violence and illegal activity on the App Store. Such incidents can’t be tolerated at any cost and have to be dealt with strictly actions at the earliest. And since Parler has taken any adequate measures to address the proliferation of these threats to people’s safety. The app store has to turn it down.
In the wake of its decision, Apple sent Parler’s developers the following note:
To the developers of the Parler app,
Thanks for your response regarding the harmful content you have on Parler. After evaluating all the content despite all the warnings, we have determined that your actions are inadequate to deal with the objectionable content on your app.
Parler has failed to keep its commitment to moderate and remove the objectionable content from the app that may lead to violence and disturbances and is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.
Your response also references a moderation plan “for the time being,” which does not meet the ongoing requirements in Guideline 1.2 – Safety – User-Generated content. While there is no perfect system to prevent all dangerous or hateful user content, apps are required to have robust content moderation plans in place to proactively and effectively address these issues. A temporary “task force” is not a sufficient response given the widespread proliferation of harmful content.
For all the above-cited reasons, your app will be removed from the App Store until your content moderation system is not up to the mark to refine the content as per the App Store policy.
In response to the action taken by App Store, Conservative commentator, and Parler investor Dan Bangon posted about the tech giant’s decision on the site.
He called Apple a giant tyrant and held Apple equally to the curbing policies of the Chinese Communist Party in its preference for totalitarian thought control. Unfortunately, Bongino was among those recently suspended from Twitter. He has also shown no intention to return to the site. While after suspension from both the App Store and Play store, it is still available to access those who have already downloaded it.
But it seems there is no near end of the bad omen for Parler. Now, there is a growing push inside Amazon to pull the plug on Parler, too.
This development from Amazon comes shortly after Google banned it from Google Play. Now Parler CEO himself refused to cave to Apple’s ultimatum to his own Parler account.
As per Amazon is concerned, the app is hosted in Amazon Web Services, and it seems that it had violated the AWS acceptable use policy which could serve as grounds for its removal.
Now, the future of the Parler app is looming in dark and there is no imminent respite for it. The leader they support, Trump, has now lost his ability to post to Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Twitch, to name a few. Let’s see how the future unfolds for both the app and its controversial leader
