Social Media Service Parler Releases Statement on Reports of Being Blocked From Returning to Apple’s App Store

HENDERSON, NV – In response to reports that Apple has denied Parler’s application to return to the App Store, Parler Chief Policy Office Amy Peikoff issued the following statement:

“Parler’s mission is to provide a welcoming, nonpartisan social media platform which allows users to exercise their freedoms of speech, thought, and association, while also respecting their privacy. 

“Over the past two months, we’ve worked towards the goal of returning to Apple’s App Store, in reliance on Tim Cook’s statements that Apple’s problem was not with our mission, but only with the perceived lack of enforcement of our guidelines. Parler has always opposed and worked to remove violent and inciting rhetoric from our platform, because it inhibits productive, civil discourse. Accordingly, and even though we knew that problems with violent and inciting content were not unique to Parler in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6—a fact that independent reviews of court records have now shown—we worked tirelessly to adopt enhanced protocols for identifying and removing this type of content. 

“We have since engaged Apple to show them how we’ve incorporated a combination of algorithmic filters and human review to detect and remove content that threatens or incites violence. We’ve also explained our new feature which empowers individual users with the option to filter out personal attacks based on immutable and irrelevant characteristics such as race, sex, sexual orientation, or religion. It’s just the latest way in which Parler enables users to curate their own feeds as they choose.   

“Parler expects and hopes to keep working with Apple to return to the App Store. We’re optimistic that Apple will continue to differentiate itself from other ‘Big Tech’ companies by supporting its customers’ choice to  ‘think different’—to exercise their constitutionally protected freedoms of thought, speech, and association—while using Apple products.”