President Trump was ousted from most major social platforms after the siege by his supporters in the US Chapter. But it remains to be seen how soon or where – if anywhere – on the Internet he will be able to reach his followers.
Parler, the far-right, was the main candidate, at least until Google and Apple removed him from app stores and Amazon launched him from its web hosting service just after midnight, Pacific Time, on Monday.
Parler could not be accessed on the Internet since 4:30 AM EST.
Parler’s CEO said he could hit him offline for a week, although this may be optimistic. And even if he finds a more friendly web hosting service without a smartphone app, it’s hard to imagine that Parler is gaining major success.
Jakub Porzycki / NurPhoto by Getty Images
The 2-year-old magnet for the far right supports more than 12 million users, although mobile app analytics firm Sensor Tower puts the number at 10 million worldwide, with 8 million in the US. had on Twitter.
However, Parler could be attractive to Mr. Trump, as his sons Eric and Don Jr. are already active there.
Parler was hit by winds on Friday as Google snatched its smartphone app from its app store because it allowed posts aimed at “inciting continued violence in the United States.” facilitates other illegal and dangerous activities. “Public safety issues will need to be addressed before they can be restored,” Apple said.
Amazon took another hit on Saturday, informing Parler that it will have to look for a new web hosting service, actually at midnight on Sunday. He reminded Parler in a letter, first reported by Buzzfeed, that he had informed her in recent weeks of 98 examples of posts “that clearly encourage and incite violence” and that the platform “presents a risk very real for public safety ”.
Parler CEO John Matze condemned the punishments as a “coordinated attack by technology giants to kill competition in the market. We were too successful too quickly,” he said in a post Saturday night, adding that it is Parler may not be available for a week “as we rebuild from scratch.”
“Every provider, from text messaging to email providers to our lawyers, gave up on the same day,” Matze told Fox Sunday Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures. He said, while the company is trying to get back online as soon as possible, “it has a lot of problems, because every vendor we talk to says it won’t work with us, because if Apple doesn’t approve and Google doesn’t approve, will not. “
Loss of access to Google and Apple’s app stores – whose operating systems power hundreds of millions of smartphones – severely limits Parler’s coverage, although it continued to be accessible via the web browser. The loss of Amazon web services means that Parler must strive to find another web host in addition to re-engineering.
Meanwhile, another widely used far-right site, Gab.com, appears to have benefited from Parler’s problems. Gab posted on Twitter early Monday that it “gained more users in the last 2 days than we did in the first two years of existence.”
While initially claiming their need to be speech-neutral, Twitter and Facebook gradually succumbed to public pressure, drawing the line especially when the so-called Plandemic video appeared at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, urging people not to wear masks. , noted civic media teacher Ethan Zuckerman. from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
Zuckerman expects the dismantling of the Trump platform to stimulate major online changes. Among them, a possible accelerated split of the social media world along ideological lines.
“Trump will attract a lot of audiences wherever he goes,” he said. This could mean more platforms with a smaller, more ideologically isolated audience.
Mr. Trump can also launch his own platform. But that won’t happen overnight, and free speech experts anticipate increasing pressure on all social media platforms to reduce incendiary rhetoric as Americans take stock of Wednesday’s violent takeover of the US Capitol by a Trump-instigated mafia.