John Matze, founder and CEO of Parler, said in an email that his company is “prepared to take full legal action” to protect its rights after several major tech companies suspended services on the Parler network in the wake of the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.
John Matze, the founder of Parler, told The Epoch Times in an email that he believes Apple, Google and Amazon acted in bad faith and that the social media platform is considering legal action.
Responding to accusations that Paller was contributing to “threats of violence and illegal activity,” Matze said the companies were still using the recent incident to “go after Paller” when “there is no evidence that Paller was used to coordinate the incident.
Matt said, “Paller doesn’t function in a group fashion, and Facebook (Facebook) is the number one tool for coordinating the gathering for that event.”
The targeted restrictions by the tech majors against Paller come in the wake of congressional riots and violence by some protesters that marred a massive, peaceful protest in front of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. A group of demonstrators dressed as Trump supporters illegally broke into the Capitol as lawmakers were taking stock of electoral votes in a joint session of Congress. The chaotic events of the day left five people dead, including one police officer, and dozens more injured. Some U.S. media and facial recognition companies suggested that some of the intruders were confirmed to be impersonated by Antifa members, and at least two protesters were confirmed to be from members of Antifa in Philadelphia.
On Friday, Twitter announced that it had permanently deleted Trump’s account from its platform, saying the president had violated their “no propaganda violence policy. The Trump campaign’s Twitter account was also deleted. Later, Trump released a statement saying he would develop his own social software to stop Twitter’s attempts to silence him.
The tech sector announced a ban on Paler on Saturday (Jan. 9) after it became the No. 1 App in the Apple App Store following the removal of Trump’s personal account by Twitter.
In a statement released to the media on Saturday, Apple said they believe that Paller “did not take appropriate steps to address” the proliferation of “threats of violence and illegal activity. We have deactivated Paller from the App Store until they resolve these issues,” the statement said.
Similarly, Amazon announced it was shutting down Paller’s servers at midnight Sunday, Jan. 10, giving the platform as the reason for its allegedly lenient approach to violent content posted by users. Paller disputes that claim.
Matt said his social media network had about 20 million accounts when the company had its accounts suspended.
Mobile app analytics firm Sensor Tower said in a statement from The Wrap that Paler had about 182,000 first-time downloads in the U.S. on Jan. 8, a 355 percent increase from Jan. 7. The statement also said that since Jan. 6. The app has about 268,000 installs in the U.S. app store.
Matt said he believes the companies are operating under a double standard.
“Google banned Paler on the same day that Twitter made ‘hang Mike Pence’ popular …… its double standard is obvious,” he said.
Matt said on his Paler account Saturday night that he believes Amazon, Google and Apple will work together “to make sure they don’t have a competitor.”
He said, “It’s a fight against all of us. Liberals, conservatives, atheists, Christians, blacks, whites, etc. They want to maintain a monopoly on speech. They want us to fight. They don’t want us to work together. They don’t want us to cooperate with each other; they want us to hate each other.”
Poorly regulated user content and certain political views have raised concerns about First Amendment rights, and for now, the law lacks checks and balances on the decisions of large tech companies. Over the past year, the bill is still currently in effect, although there has been much discussion in the Trump administration about repealing elements of Section 230, which is seen as an umbrella for social media.
Twitter’s move to delete Trump’s account has been widely criticized. U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley have all compared Twitter’s move to that of communist-run China.
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