Considering that Google and Apple’s demands are basically “we’re not going to sell your app when people are using it to promote both violent speech and violent actions because we don’t want to get sued”, yeah, it’s a common sense thing. Oh and since the Trump up until days ago was/is holding up government budgets because he wants absolute freedom to lie his head off on social media without the platforms fact checking him . . . but god forbid someone say anything un-nice about him on social media they should be terminated immediately.
So yeah, the increasingly unhinged element of the Trump and his acolytes are oblivious to the content of the First Amendment, as well as hypocrisy.
And of course this will be the death of Parler, because you can’t reach a market without the app store presence and their target audience won’t care for them if it isn’t a place where they are free to promote violent action.
You don’t need an app to use parler (or twitter for that matter). Just navigate your device’s browser to the website. And of course you can save that link as an icon on your “desktop” making the end user experience all but indistinguishable from a true app.
If there is any function gaps between the website version and the app store version, rest assured the provider will close those gaps ASAP once the app stores cut them off.
While true, there is a reason why sites make apps–it gets them more users. It’s also harder to adblock an app than a website. And a website is less performant than a native app, cutting down on things they may have wanted to provide in the app. I mean, have you played a video using your mobile browser instead of a dedicated app? I’m always running into problems with that.
I’d also expect that Parler’s audience would be more likely to have cheaper devices, possibly using more pay-as-you-go plans.
In short, it may not shut them down entirely, but it is still a huge blow to not be in any Appstore.
I’d be more concerned about how you can get apps from elsewhere on Android. And, once installed, you can make it update itself. I’d expect using that app to be more popular than using the website on your phone.
The funny thing I have found about Parler is the users who use it are all wacky conspiracy theorists but there are levels to it. For example someone writing about how Trump would stay in office because those contested states would scrap their results and hold another election without mail in ballots would look at someone writing about a military coup and think “gee what are you smoking”
I am reading sdmb on the Discourse app right now (and posting in it). It is absolutely nothing more than a wrapper for a NSWebView object – a web browser inside an app.
Yes, I was wondering about that so I experimented with just searching on the standard “.com” URL for “parler”, and went there no problem. There was a big honking link that I could have clicked on to sign up for an account, had I so chosen. No difficulty at all.
Okay. I admit I’d like to see a Venn diagram of
(1) the group of conservatives who were howling in outrage over the so-called “Obamaphone program” (in reality, a much older federal program for subsidizing discounts on communications subscriptions for low-income subscribers) and arguing that anybody too poor to afford their own phone or phone plan should just do without one; and
(2) the group of conservatives now howling in outrage over the intolerable imposition of having to use a browser instead of a dedicated app to access their bigotry-and-violence-friendly social-media accounts.
The only downside to all this is that a large number of GOP Congresscritters are likely to use all of this as evidence that the ‘libs’ are keeping down the ‘honest conservative.’ Since the last few years have pretty much proven that the latter are nearly extinct, I play the world’s smallest violin.
Side (rhetorical) question. If any of us made a public call for Pence(or Trump, Cruz, the usual gang of GOP slimeballs) to be summarily executed, wouldn’t we receive a very unpleasant visit by men in suits with guns?
Why is this fucker exempt?
Has to meet the dual test of “inciting or producing imminent lawless action, and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
Would a post on the internet meet that test?
That test is more likely aimed at a speaker who directly calls on his followers to do something violent right away and they go off and do it right away … but how often does that ever happen?
