RTFri, 08 Jan 2021 18:36 UTC
© Reuters / Shannon Stapleton
Online activist group Sleeping Giants has demanded Apple and Google remove Twitter alternative Parler from their app stores, insisting it violates their policies on incitement to violence. But they've given other apps a pass.
Google's Play Store bans apps that "depict or facilitate gratuitous violence or other dangerous activities," including "graphic depictions or descriptions of realistic violence or violent threats to any person or animal," Sleeping Giants posted on Twitter on Friday, insisting Parler had run afoul of these guidelines.
The group complained that Parler wasn't following Google's rules on "bullying and harassment," though it wasn't entirely clear which of those rules Parler had supposedly broken. "Bullying victims of international or religious conflicts," blackmail/extortion, "posting content in order to humiliate someone publicly," and "harassing victims, or their friends and families, of a tragic event" are declared off limits according to the policy.Rules against "promot[ing] violence, or incit[ing] hatred against individuals or groups" based on protected characteristics like ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, or age were also thrust into the Play Store's face, with Sleeping Giants reminding the company that Google "created these rules *themselves*" and thus has no excuse for not enforcing them.Apple, too, got the public shaming treatment, with Sleeping Giants complaining it lacks a means of filtering "objectionable material" and a way to "report offensive content and timely responses to concerns" as required by the App Store's own guidelines.
Posting a few screenshots of Parler content and insisting "this isn't free speech. This is a real threat," Sleeping Giants reminded both companies that it had gotten Gab — another right-leaning microblogging platform for those booted off Twitter — removed from both Play Store and App Store in 2017 for related reasons.
Insisting that "words matter," the group lamented that "Calls to violence turn into real violence."
However, many on social media pointed out that Parler's supposed crimes had been committed by Facebook and Twitter too, crying foul at Sleeping Giants' double standards. "By this very same metric, Twitter should also be pulled, no?" one user asked.
Users post violent and hateful content to Facebook and Twitter all the time, they argued — and no one was demanding those platforms get the boot from the app stores.
Others skipped the pleasantries and went straight to accusations of totalitarianism.
Parler — along with Facebook and Twitter — has been blamed for inciting a mob of apparent Trump supporters to burst into the Capitol while Electoral College votes were being tallied on Wednesday. Many of the demonstration's leaders had already been kicked off larger social media platforms and thus communicated via Parler. Five people died amidst the rioting, which has been used to demand further censorship on social media.
Comment: Never thought we'd say this, but
model Emily Ratajkowski called it.
And the social media censorship is indeed being amped up. More
from RT:
Facebook BANS pro-Trump '#Walkaway' group, as social media turns up censorship crackdown
8 Jan, 2021 19:42
A day after banning President Trump indefinitely and forbidding any content praising the riot in the US Capitol, Facebook has removed the popular pro-Trump '#Walkaway' page and banned its founder, Brandon Straka.
...
According to Straka, the group's page was wiped from Facebook on Friday. In an email shared on Twitter by Straka, the tech titan said the movement's page violated its terms of use, and though the precise reason for the ban wasn't mentioned, the email listed "hateful, threatening, or obscene" content as potential factors.
...
Facebook has also banned a host of what it calls "militarized social movements" from its platform, including militias like the 'Oath Keepers', conspiracy pages linked to the 'QAnon' movement, and pro-Trump groups like the 'Proud Boys'. The Facebook team promised that they would "take additional measures if necessary to keep people safe."
Conservatives and Trump supporters raged at the latest ban on Friday. Podcaster Tim Pool called the removal of Straka's page the beginning of a "great purge" - a mass rollout of online censorship that the Right has warned about since Trump's election in 2016.
See also:
The purge begins: Trump permanently banned from Twitter, along with Flynn, Powell and others - Google/Apple give Parler ultimatum to comply
Comment: Never thought we'd say this, but model Emily Ratajkowski called it.
And the social media censorship is indeed being amped up. More from RT: See also: The purge begins: Trump permanently banned from Twitter, along with Flynn, Powell and others - Google/Apple give Parler ultimatum to comply