Tim Cook announced that, if Parler cleans up their moderation to remove speech encouraging violence, they’d be allowed back in the App Store. The point is currently moot because, as Parler refused to ban hate speech or posts encouraging violence, every service dropped them. Parler is dead, and it’ll take more than removing its ban from the App Store and Google Play to revive it. But should Apple, Google, Amazon, Twilio, Okta, and the other companies that dropped Parler support allow the service back?
Yes.
No, really, they should… if Parler cleans up their act.
There are certainly people who moved to Parler to discuss conservative ideas without hate speech or violent threats. They may have liked the service more than the very public Twitter or privacy-violating Facebook (although the greatest Facebook privacy scandal was by the same people who financed Parler). Just because I disagree with their policies to my very core does not mean I want to stop them from taking part in discussions. Believe it or not, the left’s motivation here isn’t about silencing conservatives, but it really is about preventing real world violence.
Studies show that hate speech and threats of violence online frequently spread into the real world. Posts on Facebook and WhatsApp have sparked lynchings and even a genocide. German scientists found that access to Facebook actually increases hate crimes due to the prevalence of hateful content on the site. Parler had become a cesspool of posts like this, and, along with Facebook groups, was the key app that sparked the Trump supporter terrorist attack at the Captol last week.
You may have noticed that I’ve mentioned Facebook a lot. That’s because, while Parler had a large percentage of hateful and violent posts, Facebook has many posts, perhaps even more. The percentage of their posts may be different, but the reach is greater. For many of the reasons that Parler was banned, Facebook should likely be banned. But it wasn’t, because, frankly, it gets an unfair advantage. It’s “too big to fail.”
Yes, we were unfair to Parler. Not because it was banned, but because we didn’t apply the same scrutiny to Facebook. We can’t judge Facebook’s competitors in ways we’re not willing to judge Facebook on.
If Parler is willing to introduce moderation and at least try to remove posts that include hate speech against people for their race, religion, country of origin, gender, sex, sexual orientation, or any other protected class, as well as any posts suggesting or coyly suggesting violence, then they should be allowed back.
While we’re at it, it’s about time we put the same pressure we put on Parler on Facebook.