Apple has given Parler, the free-speech social network favored by conservatives, an ultimatum to implement a full moderation plan of its platform within the next 24 hours or face expulsion from the App store.
The big tech purge of online voices competing with the leftist world order of Silicon Valley escalated in the wake of the Capitol Hill riots that ensued Wednesday. The message is clear. “Toe the line or be cancelled.”
Parler co-owner Dan Bongino told The Federalist that Apple began threatening to remove the platform from its App Store and bar it from iOS devices, claiming content on the website violated the Cupertino company’s safety standards and contributed to the recent outbreak of unrest in the nation’s capital.
The online activist group Sleeping Giants has demanded Apple and Google remove Twitter alternative Parler from their app stores, insisting it violates their policies on incitement to violence. But they’ve given other apps a pass.
The group complained that Parler wasn’t following Google’s rules on “bullying and harassment,” though it wasn’t entirely clear which of those rules Parler had supposedly broken.
Posting a few screenshots of Parler content and insisting “this isn’t free speech. This is a real threat,” Sleeping Giants reminded both companies that it had gotten Gab — another right-leaning microblogging platform for those booted off Twitter — removed from both Play Store and App Store in 2017 for related reasons.
However, many on social media pointed out that Parler’s supposed crimes had been committed by Facebook and Twitter too, crying foul at Sleeping Giants’ double standards. “By this very same metric, Twitter should also be pulled, no?” one user asked.
Parler — along with Facebook and Twitter — has been accused of inciting a mob of apparent Trump supporters to burst into the Capitol while Electoral College votes were being tallied on Wednesday. Many of the demonstration’s leaders had already been kicked off larger social media platforms and thus communicated via Parler. Five people died amidst the riot, which has been used to demand further censorship on social media.
Parler co-owner Dan Bongino told The Federalist that Apple began threatening to remove the platform from its App Store and bar it from iOS devices, claiming content on the website violated the Cupertino company’s safety standards and contributed to the recent outbreak of unrest in the nation’s capital.
Bongino refuted the idea that Parler deliberately served as an online forum to incite violence any more than Facebook and Twitter, where far-right extremists openly discussed their intentions leading up to this week.
“We have clear terms of service like anyone else,” Bongino said, declaring Apple’s threat a blatant “political attack,” going on to point out that Parler has a jury system that allows users to report questionable content. “Anything that violates our terms of service, we take down. But we’re not a publisher, we’re a platform.”
Despite Facebook and Twitter hosting extremist activity on their websites, an accusation Apple has hurled specifically at Parler, neither company has responded to The Federalist’s inquiry over whether they are also being threatened with de-platforming by Apple. Both Facebook and Twitter have spent years masquerading as objective online platforms while acting as publishers, selectively censoring content that incriminates the companies’ political interests. Their roles as publishers came to full fruition when the companies weaponized their monopoly over the digital public square to suppress stories implicating then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in his son’s corrupt overseas business ventures.
Bongino said Parler has always complied with Apple’s App Store terms of service without compromising its integrity as a free-speech platform.
The big tech purge of competing voices on the right has accelerated at breakneck speed since Wednesday’s demonstrations in DC, while no such widespread censorship was employed on the same scale in the aftermath of the George Floyd riots last May and the waves of violent left-wing extremism that ensued in the summer months that followed. Irony or hypocrisy? You decide.
Parler, founded in 2018, was launched to serve as a free-speech alternative to Twitter and now boasts upwards of 18 million users. Dan Bongino warned that Apple’s “declared war” on the company stretches far wider than just Parler.
“Anyone who doesn’t toe the liberal line, they are now at open war with,” Bongino said, warning that if Apple prevails, there will never be another app that can operate as a free public square. “This is about having a public square where people can speak free of the surveillance state.”
As Christians, we do not endorse or support violence and violent speech. Neither are we in favor of heavy-handed oligarchs using their powers to control the free speech of earth’s people. However, it is happening with increasing frequency against those who differ with the current cultural narrative.
UPDATE:
Apple gave Parler a 24-hour ultimatum—begin full moderation within 24-hours or be kicked out of the App Store,—but Google Play, the app provider for users of smartphones that run the Android operating system, has already deleted the Parler app. Google decided not to wait 24 hours, or to give any warning.
This is ominous. The tech oligarchs are extending their censorship and control of information across the entire digital sphere, acting as gatekeepers of the whole Internet, not just the established social networks that they own and control.
Testimonies Volume 9
“We are living in the time of the end. The fast-fulfilling signs of the times declare that the coming of Christ is near at hand. The days in which we live are solemn and important. The Spirit of God is gradually but surely being withdrawn from the earth. Plagues and judgments are already falling upon the despisers of the grace of God. The calamities by land and sea, the unsettled state of society, the alarms of war, are portentous. They forecast approaching events of the greatest magnitude.
The agencies of evil are combining their forces and consolidating. They are strengthening for the last great crisis. Great changes are soon to take place in our world, and the final movements will be rapid ones” (9T 11.1—2).
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“I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will halt the arrogance of the proud, and will lay low the haughtiness of the ruthless” (Isaiah 13:11).
