What now, Parler?
Trump and Parler facing a Big Tech Reckoning
Tech’s reaction to the breaching of Capitol Hill by a group of pro-Trump protestors took over the news cycle this weekend.
Much of the news has zoned in on Parler, a social media platform that has become a haven for President Donald Trump’s supporters as Facebook and Twitter have clamped down on the spread of misinformation. But following the riots in Washington D.C., the site has spawned many a post praising those same violent protests, suggesting the “‘war’ isn’t over.”
It was perhaps a step too far for major tech companies. On Friday, Apple and Google removed the Rebekah Mercer-backed Parler from their app stores, each citing terms and conditions around violence, in a move that cuts off new downloads. And in the biggest blow yet to the fast-growing company, Amazon stopped hosting the company Sunday, effectively taking Parler off browsers and apps entirely.
So Parler is down. What now? Just look at what happened to Gab.com—the conservative social network that multiple companies including PayPal and GoDaddy turned away in 2018 after the Pittsburgh synagogue shooter was found to have posted his views on the platform. It has no app on Apple or Google, but it still exists online after Epik, a domain registrar, and Cloudflare, a cloud security company, agreed to go on servicing the company.
To be sure: All these actions by big tech companies will make it significantly harder for Parler to proliferate. Gab.com did come back online, but in recent years it has been accused of inflating its user count. And the question of who would be willing to continue to host Parler persists (sure, Epik and Cloudflare continued working with Gab.com after 2018, but both declined to work with 8chan).
Meanwhile, Twitter and Facebook banned President Donald Trump to varying degrees while payments processor Stripe stopped processing payments for his campaign website, a source confirmed to Fortune. Shopify too said it would remove Trump-run storefronts after last week’s events.
Lucinda Shen
Twitter: @shenlucinda
Email: lucinda.shen@fortune.com
