Behind the US Capitol Riot: Parler? ... US Big Tech Erasing Parler

[Image source=EPA Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwon Jae-hee] Major U.S. information technology (IT) companies such as Google and Apple have begun removing the far-right social networking service (SNS) 'Parler.' Parler has been used as an alternative to Twitter among supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump, but it is believed that this application (app) is linked to the recent Capitol riot incident.

According to CNBC and others on the 9th (local time), Apple removed the Parler app from the App Store that day. On the same day, Amazon's cloud service subsidiary Amazon Web Services (AWS) notified Parler that it would suspend cloud services for Parler. The day before, Google stopped distributing Parler on its Play Store. Google stated, "Posts on Parler are inciting violence," and "to prevent threats to public safety, we are banning the download of the Parler app."

Parler, which started its service in 2018, has a policy of not imposing significant restrictions on statements made by politicians and others. Because of this, when Twitter took strong measures such as permanently suspending President Trump's account, many Trump supporters and some Republican politicians moved en masse to 'Parler.' Far-right groups such as Proud Boys mainly use Parler.

There are also speculations that President Trump will move his SNS to Parler. After his Twitter account was blocked on the 8th, President Trump said, "We will not be silenced," and "We are in talks with several sites and are also considering creating our own platform."

Parler immediately pushed back. John Matze, Parler's Chief Executive Officer (CEO), said, "Big tech companies are deliberately attacking Parler to eliminate competition."

Meanwhile, according to IT specialized media TechCrunch, Parler has emerged as an alternative SNS among Trump supporters and ranked first in the Apple App Store download rankings that day. The number of Parler downloads surged from 55,000 on the 7th to 210,000 on the 8th. The total number of downloads of this app in the U.S. over three days from the 6th was counted at 268,000.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.