Google wrote in a recent statement that social media applications require content moderation policies to remove posts that incite violence, and Parler posts inspire further violence following the United States Capitol riot this week.
The deletion of the app comes from the violence in the United States. On Wednesday, Capitol of Trump supporters, which left 5 dead, renewed calls for more intimate moderation of its platforms by social media and technology companies, particularly about incitement to violence.
On Friday, Twitter permanently banned President Donald Trump’s personal account since it felt that Trump’s latest tweets called for violence, whereas Facebook prevented the establishment of the event later this month.
CNBC’s images in the Parler app show users posting references to the firing squads and calling for weapons later this month to be brought to the presidential opening. Google said in its statement that it warned the app earlier this year about its content discipline policy.
Initiated in 2018, Parler has become a pro-Trump alternative to Twitter with less content moderation earlier this year. “We’re a city square for a community, an open town square, without censorship,” said John Matze, Chief Executive Officer in June. “If you could tell it on New York Street, you could say it on Parler.”
Apps on Android phones cannot just be installed in the Google Play Store. Users can use alternative app stores or a procedure known as side-loading, which installs software manually without an app store.
The Parler application will still not be removed from user phones and is still available on the web, but on Friday the website had problems loading.
Parler did not return a comment request on Friday for the removal of the app store. Parler’s CEO, Matze posted a message from Apple on Friday in his social network snippets suggesting that Apple plans to immediately remove the applications from its iPhones app store. There was no immediate comment from an Apple representative.
In its statement, Google said that to preserve user security on Google Play, their longtime policies require that apps showing user-generated information provide moderation policies and enforcement which erase alarming content such as posts inciting violence. All developers agree with this, and in recent months Parler has reminded them of this specific policy. Google knew that Parler intended to provoke continued violence in the U.S is constantly posted. They realized that it could be challenging for apps to delete any violent content immediately, but that they wanted apps to make a solid measure for egregious content in order for them to distribute an app via Google Play. In the perspective of that urgent and continuing threat to public security, they would suspend lists from the Play Store until those problems were addressed.
