On Wednesday, Parler LLC cut its three remaining iOS
developers, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company
eliminated seven workers in total, most of whom were contractors. The other
staff worked on Parler TV and quality assurance, said the person, who asked not
to be identified discussing private matters.
When it initially removed Parler from the App Store in
January, Apple asked the social network to change its moderation practices.
Apple said that Parler’s new community guidelines, released when the service
came back online Feb. 15, were insufficient to comply with the App Store rules.
“After having reviewed the new information, we do not
believe these changes are sufficient to comply with App Store Review
guidelines” Apple wrote to Parler’s chief policy officer on Feb. 25. “There is
no place for hateful, racist, discriminatory content on the App Store.”
Apple included several screenshots to support the rejection.
Some screenshots, reviewed by Bloomberg, show user profile pictures with
swastikas and other white nationalist imagery, and user names and posts that
are misogynistic, homophobic and racist.
“As you know, developers are required to implement robust
moderation capabilities to proactively identify, prevent and filter this objectionable
content to protect the health and safety of users,” Apple added in its letter
to Parler, a copy of which was obtained by Bloomberg.
“In fact, simple searches reveal highly objectionable
content, including easily identified offensive uses of derogatory terms
regarding race, religion and sexual orientation, as well as Nazi symbols,”
Apple wrote “For these reasons your app cannot be returned to the App Store for
distribution until it complies with the guidelines.”
Parler’s community guidelines were written by Chief Policy
Officer Amy Peikoff, according to two people familiar with the matter. Parler
did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.
Parler went offline following the riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Amazon Web Services cut ties with Parler, and Google and Apple removed Parler
from their mobile app stores. The Parler website relaunched in February with
support from cloud hosting company SkySilk Inc. -Bloomberg
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