Apple chief Tim Cook said the posts on the right-wing social app Parler represented an “incitement to violence” that justified his removal from the App Store.
In an interview to air on Fox Broadcasting’s “Fox News Sunday” this Sunday (January 17), Cook told anchor Chris Wallace that Apple “looked at the incitement to violence that was there and … we don’t consider that freedom of expression. “
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Asked by Wallace whether Parler’s startup by Apple, which became popular with Trump loyalists as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook, would only serve to direct app users into the “underworld,” Cook replied, “Well, we just we suspended them, Chris. And then, if they managed to moderate it, they would go back there. “
For now, Parler’s return to any internet platform seems highly unlikely.
On Saturday, Apple kicked Parler out of his app store, citing threats of violence and illegal activities in the app, following the deadly pro-Trump riot on U.S. Capitol Hill. “Parler has not taken adequate steps to deal with the proliferation of these threats to people’s security,” said Apple on 9 January. Google had taken the same action to remove Parler’s Android app the day before.
Then, on Sunday, Amazon’s AWS division withdrew Parler’s hosting services, with the e-commerce giant citing nearly 100 examples of violent threats at Parler.
Parler sued Amazon on Monday (complaint on this link), claiming that Amazon violated its contract and violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by allegedly conspiring with Twitter to close the application. Amazon, in a Jan. 12 lawsuit (on this link), said: “This case is not about suppressing speech or stifling views. This is not a conspiracy to restrict trade ”,“ Rather, this case is about Parler’s reluctance and inability to remove content that threatens public security from Amazon Web Services (‘AWS’) servers, for example , inciting and planning the rape, torture and murder of appointed civil servants and private citizens. “
In an interview with Reuters this week, Parler CEO John Matze admitted that the app may never go online, saying, “It is difficult to control how many people are telling us that we can no longer do business with them.”
Before the app went dark, Matze, who previously worked briefly for Amazon’s AWS division, complained in app posts that tech companies were plotting to blacklist Parler and attacked “politically motivated companies and those authoritarian who hate to freedom of expression”. Matze also stated: “Most people at Parler are non-violent people who want to share their opinions, photos of food and more.”
In the “Fox News Sunday” interview, Wallace challenged Cook, asking the Apple CEO: “Doesn’t Big Tech restrict freedom of expression?” Cook replied, “We have an app store with about 2 million apps. And we have terms of service for those apps. Obviously, we do not control what is on the internet, but we have never seen that our platform should be a simple replication of the internet. We have rules and regulations and we just ask people to follow them ”. (Watch clips from the interview here and here.)
Several Parler users participated in the attack on the United States Capitol. After the app was shut down, a developer released an interactive online map using GPS metadata and about 50 videos that were posted to Parler during the attack, Motherboard reported.
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