Amazon, Apple and Google Cut Off Parler, an App That Drew Trump Supporters

Several Parler executives accused the tech companies’ moves as being politically motivated and anticompetitive.

Mr. Matze pointed to the fact that Twitter had recently promoted the phrase “Hang Mike Pence” as a trending topic. (The majority of the discussion on Twitter was about rioters chanting the phrase about the vice president on Wednesday.) “I have seen no evidence Apple is going after them,” Mr. Matze said. “This would appear to be an unfair double standard as every other social media site has the same issues, arguably on a worse scale.”

The actions against Parler were part of a wider crackdown by tech companies on President Trump and some of his most extreme supporters after Wednesday’s deadly riot in Washington. But unlike Twitter and Facebook, which make decisions about the content that appears on their own sites, Amazon, Apple and Google weighed in on how another company was operating.

Amazon Web Services supports a large share of the websites and apps across the internet, while Apple and Google make the operating systems that back nearly all of the world’s smartphones. Now that the companies have made it clear that they will take action against sites and apps that don’t sufficiently police what their users post, it could have significant side effects.

Several upstarts have courted Mr. Trump’s supporters with promises of “unbiased” and “free speech” social networks, which have proven to be, in effect, free-for-all digital town squares where users hardly have to worry about getting banned for spreading conspiracy theories, making threats or posting hate speech. The tougher enforcement from the tech companies could preclude such apps from becoming realistic alternatives to the mainstream social networks. They now face the choice of either stepping up their policing of posts — undercutting their main feature in the process — or losing their ability to reach a wide audience.

That may reinforce the primacy of the social-media incumbents, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. It also gives those companies’ decisions more teeth. If they ban a pundit for violating their rules, that person will lack a strong alternative.

Amazon, Apple and Google’s moves could also spur other apps to strengthen their enforcement.

DLive, a livestreaming site that rioters storming the Capitol used to broadcast the moment, said on Friday that it had indefinitely suspended seven channels and permanently removed over 100 previous broadcasts of the mob. It added that the “lemons,” a DLive currency that can be converted into real money, sent to the suspended channels would be refunded to donors in the next few days.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/technology/apple-google-parler.html