After Wednesday’s protests at the Capitol building, big tech took the opportunity to silence its opponents, banning Donald Trump and delisting Parlour from the Google and Apple app stores.
The Daily Wire reported that: Trump used the official @Potus account to accuse Twitter of “banning free speech” and announced he is “negotiating with various other sites, and will have a big announcement soon, while we also look at the possibilities of building out our own platform in the near future. We will not be SILENCED!”
“As I have been saying for a long time, Twitter has gone further and further in banning free speech, and tonight, Twitter employees have coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me — and YOU, the 75,000,000 great patriots who voted for me,” the president tweeted from the @Potus account.
“Twitter may be a private company, but without the government’s gift of Section 230, they would not exist for long. I predicted this would happen,” he tweeted. “We will not be SILENCED! Twitter is not about FREE SPEECH. They are all about promoting a Radical Left platform where some of the most vicious people in the world are allowed to speak freely. STAY TUNED!”
The CEO of gab, a Facebook alternative, said that his site is picking up tens of thousands of new accounts each day.
500,000+ new users today.
18 million visits.
You don't need an account to use the site.
The Silicon Valley Exodus has begun.
Get in the Ark: https://t.co/J3Rfto6fi3
The best is yet to come.
— Gab.com (@getongab) January 10, 2021
Torba said he’s been in touch with Trump’s team.
“I’m going to be upfront with you: I am in the process of connecting with President Trump’s team as we speak,” wrote Torba in a message posted to his website. “The President’s Gab account is already reserved with hundreds of thousands of followers. We need to massively expand our server capacity and very quickly.”
Alternate to Twitter, Parler, has also seen a massive uptick in users over the past few months.
“Over the past several months, Parler has become one of the fastest-growing apps in the United States. Millions of President Trump’s supporters have flocked to it as Facebook and Twitter increasingly cracked down on posts that spread misinformation and incited violence, including muzzling Mr. Trump by removing his accounts this past week. By Saturday morning, Apple listed Parler as the No. 1 free app for its iPhones,” The New York Times reported.
“First, Apple and Google removed the app from their app stores because they said it had not sufficiently policed its users’ posts, allowing too many that encouraged violence and crime. Then, late Saturday, Amazon told Parler it would boot the company from its web-hosting service on Sunday night because of repeated violations of Amazon’s rules. Amazon’s move meant that Parler’s entire platform would soon go offline unless it was able to find a new hosting service on Sunday,” the Times reported.
