Parler, the social media network for people furious that Lola Bunny’s animated tits are too small now, will not return to iOS anytime soon.
The social network, targeting conservatives, Trump supporters, and several others right-wing crutches and bigots, branded itself as one censorship free site that would only remove illegal posts and liberal trolls. Predictably, it became a hive of it death and rape against Democrats, racist tirades and pro-Trump conspiracy theories. Parler was subsequently booted from its Amazon web hosting and Apple and Google’s respective app stores in January, after numerous Parler users were implicated in pro-Trump riots in the Capitol on January 6, where five people died.
Parler was forced offline for weeks and came back late last month with promises of better moderation (those who are extremely skeptical given the site’s majority investor and GOP mega donor Rebekah Mercer took the opportunity to fire CEO John Matze and replace him with a Tea Party activist). In the midst of it all, Parler fell flat on his face in a doomed antitrust lawsuit against Amazon introducing itself as the victim. It doesn’t seem to do much better in its quest to get back to the App Store, per Bloomberg, which reported Wednesday that Apple had rejected Parler’s appeal to return to the App Store on February 25.
According to Bloomberg, Apple staff wrote in a letter to Parler that it did not believe the app’s refresh included any meaningful moderation changes and that it still believed it was inundated with “ hateful, racist, [and] discriminatory ”content:
“After reviewing the new information, we believe these changes are not sufficient to comply with the App Store Review guidelines,” Apple wrote to Parler’s Chief Policy Officer on Feb. 25. “There is no room for hateful, racist and discriminatory content on the website. App Store.”
Apple has added several screenshots to support the rejection. Some screenshots, reviewed by Bloomberg, show profile photos of users with swastikas and other white nationalist images, and usernames and messages that are misogynistic, homophobic, and racist.
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Apple left open the possibility that Parler could return to the App Store in the future if it complies with the guidelines but left it pretty clear that Parler was nowhere close to that.
“As you know, developers must implement robust moderation capabilities to proactively identify, prevent and filter this objectionable content to protect users’ health and safety,” Apple wrote in the letter obtained by Bloomberg. “… In fact, simple searches reveal highly offensive content, including easily identifiable offensive use of derogatory terms related to race, religion, and sexual orientation, as well as Nazi symbols. For these reasons, your app cannot be returned to the App Store. for distribution if it complies with guidelines. “
Parler reportedly laid off (or canceled maybe once in a while) the three iOS developers it still employed, as well as four other employees on Wednesday, told a source on Bloomberg, indicating it has likely given up on ever getting back to iOS.
According to the Washington Post, To talk The new CEO, Tea Party Patriots co-founder Mark Meckler, had previously expressed confidence that Parler’s app would return to iOS. However, he also said the company had no interest in appeasing the moderators in the Google Play Store as it is much easier to sideload apps on Android.