The purge is happening. The world’s largest tech companies have banned an upstart social media service from their App Stores.
Google, owned by Alphabet, went first, saying Parler is allowing its users to incite violence and is not policing the conversations people are having on the new alternative to Twitter.
Apple, the world’s largest tech company, gave Parler 24 hours to clean up its act. It has now suspended Parler from its App Store entirely and the app is dysfunctional for those who already have it.
Twitter has been blocking and banning conservative voices on its messaging platform, with a massive purge that began last week with the blocking of the president. The site’s staff and computer algorithm appear to be making their way through thousands of accounts, which are being curtailed, hidden, blocked, shadow-banned and outright banned due to what Twitter thinks is unhelpful speech.
Parler is majority owned by Dan Bongino, who also publishes the Bongino Report, an alternative to the formerly conservative Drudge Report. There are a lot of angry voices on Parler, many who have been banned from Twitter, and some are inciting violence against politicians and journalists. Parler was created as an alternative to Twitter due to policing of free speech.
The social media account purging is underway on other platforms and with some big names: Steve Bannon, formerly of Breitbart, was banned from YouTube, which has also blocked Rudy Giuliani’s videos. Facebook has blocked the @WalkAway page that encourages Democrats to leave the Democratic Party. It had a half million followers.
Mozilla wrote on its company blog that “de-platforming” was not enough. Companies like Mozilla need to do more to shut down misinformation and disinformation, and elevate “factual voices.”
In the business world, the Cancel Culture is all the rage. Randall Lane, editor of Forbes magazine, advised businesses that they should not hire press secretaries who had served in the Trump Administration. To do so would make their companies untrustworthy, and a target of journalists.
“As American democracy rebounds, we need to return to a standard of truth when it comes to how the government communicates with the governed,” Lane wrote. “The easiest way to do that, from where I sit, is to create repercussions for those who don’t follow the civic norms.”
In other Cancel Culture news, the Lincoln Project, a Democrat organization that worked to unseat the president, announced it is building a blacklist of Trump Administration employees to ensure they cannot find employment.
“At @ProjectLincoln we are constructing a database of Trump officials & staff that will detail their roles in the Trump administration & track where they are now. No personal info, only professional. But they will be held accountable & not allowed to pretend they were not involved,” wrote Stuart Stevens of the Lincoln Project.
