In an interview with Kara Swisher, available now on Apple Podcasts, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook discussed the situation and concerns surrounding Parler and whether or not it would be welcomed back to the App Store after being suspended in January.
They were not adhering to the guidelines of the App Store. You can’t allow people to incite violence, you can’t allow hate speech and so fourth. They had moved from moderating to not being able to moderate and we gave them a chance to cure that, and they were unable to do that or didn’t do that, so we had to pull them off.
The far-right social media network was removed from the App Store and Google Play Store earlier this year after inciting the attacks on the US Capitol, with Apple citing issues of Parler’s “commitment to moderate and remove harmful or dangerous content”.
Cook says that he hopes “they come back” and that “we work hard to keep people on the Store, not to keep people off the store”. He says that at one point in time “they were compliant, and then they were not.”
I hope they come back on, we work hard to keep people on the Store, not to keep people off the store. I’m hoping they put in the moderation that’s required to be on the Store and come back. I think having more social networks out there is better than having less.
Parler is now back online from weeks of downtime after Amazon, who hosted the site, terminated the site’s contract. It has now found another hosting deal with a firm based in LA.
