New Delhi: Controversial conservative social media app, ‘Parler’ was recently denied to re-enter Apple’s App Store after it was kicked off the platform in the aftermath of January 6 Capitol riot, documents obtained by Bloomberg show.
On Wednesday, Parler removed its three remaining iOS developers, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company eliminated seven workers in total, most of them were contractors. The others were the ones who worked on Parler TV and quality assurance, said the source, who asked not to be identified.
When it initially removed Parler from the App Store in January, Apple had asked the social network to change its moderation practices. Apple said that new community guidelines of Parler which were released on February 15, were insufficient to comply with the App Store rules.
“After having reviewed the new information, we do not believe these changes are sufficient to comply with App Store Review guidelines” Apple wrote to Parler’s chief policy officer on February 25. “There is no place for hateful, racist, discriminatory content on the App Store.”
Apple sent several screenshots as proof to support the rejection. Some of the screenshots as reviewed by Bloomberg, contain user profile pictures with swastikas and other white nationalist imagery along with user names and posts that are misogynistic, racist and homophobic.
“As you know, developers are required to implement robust moderation capabilities to proactively identify, prevent and filter this objectionable content to protect the health and safety of users,” Apple said in its letter to Parler, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg.
“In fact, simple searches reveal highly objectionable content, including easily identified offensive uses of derogatory terms regarding race, religion and sexual orientation, as well as Nazi symbols,” Apple wrote “For these reasons your app cannot be returned to the App Store for distribution until it complies with the guidelines.”
Parler’s new community guidelines were written by Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff, according to two sources. Parler did not respond to a request for comment by Bloomberg on Wednesday.
Parler went offline after the attack on the US Capitol. Amazon Web Services have also cut ties with Parler, while Google and Apple removed the social media app from their app stores. The Parler website was relaunched in February with support from cloud hosting company SkySilk.
