Parler Down: Users Experience 'Not Working' Issues as Apple Threatens to Ban with 24-Hour Ultimatum

Urian B., Tech Times 08 January 2021, 08:01 pm

Parler, a particular alternative social-media platform that is known for its lax approach when it comes to moderating content appears to be experiencing a huge outage as of Friday evening. A number of users of this platform had tweeted that they were not able to access Parler's official website and app.

Parler ban Apple

According to an article by Business Insider, Parler did not give any response to a certain request for comment regarding this story. The reports of Parler's outage currently coincides with the reports that Apple is now threatening to ban Parler from its own App Store due to serious complaints.

Apple then said that it had given Parler an ultimatum of 24 hours for them to address the App Store policy violations. According to the article, it is quite unlikely that this current outage is actually connected to Apple's recent warning.

Parler ban rules

The outage reports now came amid Twitter's decision to ban content due to the underlying risk of inciting further violence. The users of another platform called Gab which is known as another particular social-media platform that has also exploded as certain mainstream sites have started cracking down misinformation, glorification of violence, and also hate speech has reportedly been experiencing issues as well.

Certain sites just like Parler and Gab have started to rise to prominence during the recent months as the mainstream social-media sites have now faced increasing pressure for them to crack down misinformation, hate speech, as well as calls for violence. After the recent elections that happened in November, Parler was reportedly downloaded a total of about 530,000 times in the United States alone. This was according to the data coming from Apptopia.

Parler ban users

Apptopia gave a statement to Business Insider that the Parler downloads spiked a whopping 323% of their own average weekly volume last October. Aside from Apple, Google also reportedly removed Parler from its PlayStore according to an article by The Verge.

The article by The Verge noted that Google has just suspended Parler from its own Play Store which was first reported by an article from Politico that was reported by Cristiano Lima as well as another article by New York Times own reporter Jack Nicas. The article then confirmed that the app is currently no longer available on the Play Store.

Google: Parler banned

Both Apple and Google have currently come under the pressure to remove the particular app, which is now known for having even less moderation as well as coming across as a certain conservative-friendly alternative to the other social media platforms. The pressure comes as the main selling point of these apps is that they do not thoroughly filter their content which means that users will be able to post just about anything.

With Apple giving Parler an ultimatum, it is still to be seen as to whether the app will choose to abide and give in to Apple's demands when it comes to its filtering its content.

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by Urian Buenconsejo