Apple Approves Parler’s Return to App Store

   Apple has approved Parler’s methods to detect and moderate hate speech and incitement, and will return the app to the iOS app store, according to a letter the iPhone maker sent to Congress on Monday.

  “Apple anticipates that the updated Parler app will become available immediately upon Parler releasing it,” said Apple’s letter, which was addressed to Sen. Mike Lee and Rep. Ken Buck.

      Parler was removed from Apple and Google’s app stores, as well as Amazon Web Services, in early January in the days after the US Capitol riots that took place on Jan. 6.

    In January, Apple had given Parler 24 hours’ notice to implement a content moderation system or face removal from the App Store. Parler, which promotes itself as a space that champions free speech, resisted making changes, and Apple removed the app, as promised.

   In court filings and elsewhere, Parler has said that it had been developing an artificial intelligence-based content moderation system when the larger platforms' crackdown took place, npr reported.

   Over the last few months, however, Apple had kept the door open to allowing Parler back into the App Store, based on whether it implemented a content moderation system, which Apple has approved on April 14.

   On Feb. 15, Parler came back online, but when former Parler CEO John disputed with Rebekah Mercer, the Republican mega-donor and Parler co-founder, over how the platform should address inflammatory content, which many say the site did little to monitor, Matze was fired and stripped of all his shares of the company.