Parler app popular with far-right back on Apple Store after GOP complaint
Apple is letting Parler back on its App Store after a couple of congressional Republicans complained about the social media platform being removed for facilitating far-right and white supremacist propaganda.
Apple, which banned Parler in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, said in a Monday letter to Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Colorado Rep. Ken Buck that it is reinstating the app effective immediately after the platform agreed to update its “content moderation practices.”
Lee, a Tea Party-style conservative who has been in Congress since 2011, took a victory lap over the action.
“Conservative speech must not be silenced,” he wrote on Twitter.
Lee and Buck fired off a letter to Apple on March 31 lamenting Parler’s de-platforming, claiming the ban appeared to “lack any of the procedural fairness” typically afforded in such cases. They also suggested without evidence that the ban may have been coordinated with Google and Amazon’s app platforms.
In Monday’s letter, Apple said “it did not coordinate or otherwise consult with Google or Amazon” in banning Parler.
Apple also affirmed that it banned Parler because the platform facilitated “posts that encouraged violence, denigrated various ethnic groups, races and religions, glorified Nazism, and called for violence.”
“Apple stands by that decision,” the company said of its initial ban.
It’s unclear exactly what updates Parler made to its moderation practices to bring them into compliance with Apple’s policies.
Parler became popular on the right last year after Twitter, Facebook and Instagram began banning thousands of users — including former President Donald Trump — for pushing violent and racist rhetoric.
Law enforcement agencies and federal prosecutors have said in court papers that Parler was also used for planning purposes by some of the pro-Trump attackers who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 in a deadly attempt to stop Congress from certifying President Biden’s election.
