Parler founder and CEO John Matze is “prepared to take full legal action” after several major technology companies suspended Parler’s social media networking services, according to an email from his company.
Parler founder Matze told The Epoch Times in an email that he believes Apple, Google and Amazon acted in bad faith and that the Parler social media platform is considering legal action.
Responding to accusations of “violent threats and illegal activity” by technology companies, Martz said the companies are using recent events in Congress to “go after Parler,” but there is “no evidence that Parler is being used to coordinate these events.
“Parler does not have a group-style feature, and Facebook is the primary vehicle for the event to coordinate meetups.” Martz wrote in the letter.
Apple, Google and Amazon.com Inc. have made targeted moves to restrict Parler after a break-in at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday (Jan. 6) disrupted a largely peaceful protest.
On Jan. 6, a group of rioters and a handful of protesters waving flags stormed the Capitol as lawmakers were counting electoral votes in a joint session. The day’s chaos left five people dead, including an office cop, and dozens of police officers injured.
In response to the Capitol breach, some Silicon Valley tech companies have increased their efforts to regulate the speech of President Trump and conservatives, claiming that their voices and comments “could be harmful to society.
Twitter on Friday (Jan. 8) permanently deleted President Trump’s account from its platform, justifying the scrutiny by claiming the president violated the company’s “glorification of violence policy” after posting a message urging protesters to remain peaceful and leave the Capitol. The Trump campaign’s Twitter account was also deleted.
Parler, which has attracted a large number of classical liberal and conservative downloads since the election, appears to have been targeted by Big Tech for lacking a “robust vetting system for egregiously inaccurate content.
In a statement to the press on Saturday (Jan. 9), Apple said they believe “Parler did not take sufficient steps to address the proliferation of threats of violence and illegal activity.
“We have suspended Parler from the App Store until they address these issues,” the statement said. The statement said.
Similarly, Amazon told Parler that they would shut down Parler’s servers at midnight on Sunday, Jan. 10, due to what it said was the platform’s allegedly lax attitude toward violent content posted by users. But Parler disputed the claim.
Apple and Amazon did not immediately respond to media questions about Parler’s ban.
Parler founder Mazi said he believes the companies are operating with a double standard of censorship.
He said, “It’s a clear double standard that Parler was banned by Google on the same day that Twitter made the #HangMikePence (Mike Pence on hanging) hashtag a hot topic.”
Parler rose to the No. 1 app in the Apple App Store on Jan. 9 after Twitter blocked President Trump’s personal account, which Maz believes is likely one of the reasons why Big Tech is rounding up Parler. He said his social media network had about 20 million accounts at the time Big Tech suspended accounts including President Trump’s.
Parler was downloaded about 182,000 times in the U.S. on Jan. 8, up 355 percent from Jan. 7, according to mobile app analytics firm Sensor Tower. Since Jan. 6, the app has been installed about 268,000 times across U.S. app stores.
Mazzie said on his Parler account the evening of Jan. 9 that he believes Amazon, Google and Apple have coordinated to try to ensure that Parler is not competitive.
“They won’t win! We are the last hope for freedom of speech and freedom of information in the world.” Martz said.
“This is a war against all of us. Liberals, conservatives, atheists, Christians, blacks, whites, etc. They want to keep their monopoly on speech. They want us to fight. They don’t want us to work together, they don’t want us to work with each other, they want us to hate each other.”
In a statement, Maz said, “We will now do our best to move to a new provider, and there are a lot of providers competing to take our business. But Amazon, Google and Apple did this intentionally as a collaboration between them, thinking that our options would be limited and also thinking that it would cause the most damage because President Trump was banned from speaking out on the tech company’s platform.”
Martz added, “This is a coordinated attack by the tech giants to stifle competition in the marketplace. (Because) we succeeded too quickly. You can expect the war on competition and free speech to continue, but don’t think we’re out of the game.”
Recent unbalanced regulation of user content and certain political views in social media has raised concerns about First Amendment rights and the lack of checks and balances in decision-making by large technology companies. Limiting or eliminating the protections of Section 230 of the Communications Regulatory Act for tech companies’ censorship responsibilities has been widely discussed over the past year.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley have all likened Twitter’s move to delete President Trump’s account to the actions of the Chinese Communist Party.
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