Parler surged to No. 1 on Apple App Store’s chart of top free apps Saturday after Apple threatened to ban the app from the store and Google suspended the free speech social media platform from its Play Store.
[UPDATE: Apple has now pulled Parler from the App Store.]
Audrey Conklin for FOXBusiness:
Sean Davis, co-founder of conservative outlet The Federalist, tweeted Friday that Apple is asking Parler to engage in “censorship policies” or face de-listing, citing two people familiar with the situation.
Data analytics company App Figures estimates that on Saturday, Parler downloads will surpass 1.5 million on the App Store, driven in large part by pro-Trump conservatives leaving Twitter in protest.
On Friday, Appfigures estimated that “downloads grew to more than 340,000, up from about 12,000 in the prior week” based on company data. The total number of downloads “between Wednesday and Friday are estimated to have added more than 450,000 new downloads.”
Parler’s “mission is to create a social platform in the spirit of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,” according to its Community Guidelines, which states that the platform does not allow “child sexual abuse material, content posted by or on behalf of terrorist organizations [and] intellectual property theft.” The website may also flag material promoting “criminal solicitation, fraud and nuisance,” even if it is not illegal.
MacDailyNews Take: Regardless of any attempted implementation of the glorious Information Purification Directives, Parler is accessible online via any web browser, even Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari, here: https://parler.com/
Apple CEO Tim Cook, accepting the Newseum’s 2017 “Free Expression” Award:
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.”