Google suspends ‘free speech’ app Parler

Daily US Times: Google has suspended Parler from its Play Store over its failure to remove “egregious content”.

Parler, which is Google’s “free speech” social network’ styles itself as “unbiased” social media and has proved popular with people banned from Twitter.

But Google said the social network app had failed to remove posts inciting violence.

Apple has also warned that it will remove the ”free speech” app from its App Store if it does not comply with its content-moderation requirements.

“We won’t cave to politically motivated companies and those authoritarians who hate free speech!” the app’s chief executive John Matze said.

Parler was launched in 2018 and has proved particularly popular among supporters of Donald Trump and right-wing conservatives. Such groups have frequently accused Facebook and Twitter of unfairly censoring their views.

While President Trump himself is not a user, the platform already features several high-profile contributors following earlier bursts of growth in 2020.

Republican Senator Ted Cruz gained 4.9 million followers on the platform, while Sean Hannity, Fox News host and one of Trump’s adrent supporter, has about seven million.

It briefly became the most-downloaded app in the US after the US election, following a clampdown on the spread of election misinformation by Facebook and Twitter.

However, both Google and Apple have said the app fails to comply with content-moderation requirements.

Google confirmed in a statement that it had suspended the app from its Play Store, saying: “Our longstanding policies require that apps displaying user-generated content have moderation policies and enforcement that removes egregious content like posts that incite violence.

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