Parler co-owner Dan Bongino told The Federalist that Apple has threatened to ban the platform from its App Store and bar it from iOS devices. In early November, the social media app and Twitter rival topped the Apple App Store list of most popular apps for the first time.
On Parler, CEO John Matze said the platform will not “cave to politically motivated companies and those authoritarians who hate free speech.”
See also:
• Parler rises to No. 1 on App Store after Apple threatens ban – January 9, 2021 8:01 pm ET
• Apple pulls Parler from the App Store – January 9, 2021 8:56 pm ET
Tristan Justice for The Federalist:
“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 immediately 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.
Parler, founded in 2018, was launched to serve as a free-speech alternative to Twitter and now boasts upwards of 18 million users, Bongino told The Federalist, warning that Apple’s “declared war” on the company stretches far wider than just Parler.
“Anyone who doesn’t tow 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.”
MacDailyNews Take: The founders of the United States of America put the First Amendment to the United States Constitution first for a reason.
Again, in text form (feel free to copy and share), here’s Apple CEO Tim Cook, accepting the Newseum’s 2017 Free Expression Award on April 18, 2017:
Art and music, design and performance, opinion, fiction, provocation, are what we work to enable. That fills us with such a sense of pride as well as a deep sense of responsibility because we know that these freedoms require protection; not just the forms of speech that entertain us, but the ones that challenge us, the ones that unnerve and even displease us. They’re the ones that need protection the most. Unpopular speech, unpopular art, and unpopular ideas; speech that questions the people in power.
It’s no accident that these freedoms are enshrined and protected in the First Amendment. They’re the foundation of so many of our rights. We means we all have a stake, and a role, in defending them. This is a responsibility that Apple takes very seriously… We work to defend these freedoms enabling people around the world to speak up.”
It will be interesting, to say the least, to see if the Newseum (now defunct, tellingly) was right or wrong with that award.
And, now for some George Orwell quotes (a book of whose, “1984,” Apple once based a very famous television commercial):
• If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.
• What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side.
• Big Brother is Watching You.
Apple Computer’s “1984” commercial:
Today we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives.
[Apple’s hammer-thrower enters, pursued by storm troopers.]
We have created for the first time in all history a garden of pure ideology, where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests of any contradictory true thoughts.
Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth.
We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause.
Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion.
[Hammer is thrown at the screen]
We shall prevail!
[Boom!]
On January 24th Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.”
File under “Things that make you go ‘hmmm.'”
A few more quotes:
• If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter. ― George Washington
• Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech. ― Benjamin Franklin
• To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy. ― Aung San Suu Kyi
• Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost. ― Neil Gaiman
• Censorship reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime. – Potter Stewart
• Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. ― United Nations
Regardless of Apple’s moves or, if they’re smart, non-moves, Parler is accessible online here: https://parler.com/
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak for The Atlantic, December 21, 2010:
The Internet has become as important as anything man has ever created. But those freedoms are being chipped away. Please, I beg you, open your senses to the will of the people to keep the Internet as free as possible… I don’t want to feel that whichever content supplier had the best government connections or paid the most money determined what I can watch and for how much. This is the monopolistic approach and not representative of a truly free market in the case of today’s Internet.
The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. — John Gilmore