Parler, the controversial conservative social media app, was denied re-entry Apple Inc. App Store recently after being launched on the platform in the wake of the January 6 Capitol Uprising, documents obtained by Bloomberg show.
Wednesday, Parler LLC downgraded its three remaining iOS developers, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company eliminated a total of seven workers, most of whom were contractors. The other staff worked at Parler TV and the quality assurance, said the person, who asked not to be identified on private matters.
When it initially removed Parler from the App Store in January, Apple asked the social network to change its moderation practices. Apple said the new guidelines from the Parler community, published when the service reconnected on February 15 and was not enough to meet App Store rules.
“After reviewing the new information, we don’t believe these changes are sufficient to comply with the App Store review guidelines,” Apple wrote to Parler’s policy director on Feb. 25. “There is no place for hateful, racist and discriminatory content in App Store.”
Apple included several screenshots to support the rejection. Some screenshots, reviewed by Bloomberg, show user profile images with swastikas and other white nationalist images, and misogynistic, homophobic, and racist usernames and posts.
“As you know, developers need to implement robust moderation capabilities to proactively identify, prevent, and filter out this nasty content to protect the health and safety of users,” Apple added in its letter to Parler, a copy of the which was obtained by Bloomberg.
“In fact, simple searches reveal highly unpleasant content, including easily identifiable offensive uses of derogatory terms regarding race, religion, and sexual orientation, as well as Nazi symbols,” Apple wrote. “For these reasons, your app cannot be returned to the App Store for distribution until it meets the guidelines.”
The Parler community guidelines were written by Amy Peikoff, policy director, according to two people familiar with the subject. Parler did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
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Parler went offline after the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Amazon Web Services severed ties with Parler and Google and Apple removed Parler from its mobile app stores. The Parler website was relaunched in February with support from cloud hosting company SkySilk Inc.
(Updates with screenshot description in the fifth paragraph.)