Parler, the Twitter alternative platform marketed to those desiring unmoderated posting across subjects including abject racism, anti-Semitism and misogyny had its app banned by Google Play’s store yesterday. It was just banned by Apple’s App Store a couple of hours go.

Apple’s App Store says no.

Worse for the Alt-Right, Amazon Web Services just announced pulling it’s hosting services for Parler too. Meaning unless Parler can find an alternative lifeline for its website and servers—like an off-shore fortified hub in Europe—its extremist users will be forced back onto the Dark Web, or Ultra-Nationalist website chat groups where they’ve been festering for decades—while to the chagrin of the MAGA mob there lacks the all-important mainstream reach and ease.

Basically, run of the mill Republicans and those who favour genuine Centrist or Right-Wing mantras were fools for thinking that Parler was for them.

Rather, they’ve been caught in a web of a conspiracism that started in 1990 USA and through the advent of cable media, mainly News Corp, found 24/7 legitimacy funded by the advertisers and subscribers who put regular shows and channels to air.

Parler was founded in 2018 by John Matze who recently thought he’d struck gold with the advent of MAGA-Republicanism and its associated QAnon phenomenon. Funded by the Mercer family who additionally owned Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News through the rise of Trump, the past few months have seen masses of Twitter users boast of their joining the new Trumpist social media fun—believing that trolling and conspiracy theorising were part of the mainstream conversation: the whole protected by US First Amendment rights.

Crazily, verified membership of Parler required users to submit bona fides including phone numbers, social security numbers, drivers licences and other identifying data the platform said would never be shared externally—but nonetheless will now constitute evidence as investigation into the January 6th US Capitol insurrection and conspiracy grows.

Little known MeWe “The Next Gen Social Network” according to its marketing, an Alt-Right Parler equivalent to Facebook sits next in the firing line.

But it’s the concept of burst communication—the mini blog—that the social media industry has sought first to protect itself from in terms of liability.

Like Twitter, Facebook has already banned Donald Trump and various extremist groups from its platform. Now that Parler has been hit, it wouldn’t be hard shuttering MeWe either seeing that unlike Facebook, its full messaging functionality seeks payment of a fee—a concept unpopular in social media though another means of identification for its users. MeWe in other words, is not built for messaging, rather its groups.

Let’s just say that like cable news, mainstream social media up to this point has had few qualms translating its user base into revenue.

It’s finally good to see the realisation that stable government is better for business than pogroms, race riots and gangs of thugs in the streets, or the halls of power.

Isn’t good to see that the US has still kept its soul?

© 2021 Adam Parker.