'Tech titans are feigning offense to destroy Parler': Glenn Greenwald blasts app's ban claiming 'far more violence has been planned on Facebook' while accusing YouTube of 'promoting right-wing extremism'

Glenn Greenwald has claimed 'far more violence' has been planned on Facebook than on Parler after Google and Apple removed the latter from their app stores and Amazon booted it off its web hosting service.

The journalist tweeted Sunday to accuse the tech giants of 'feigning offense to destroy' the app after Donald Trump was on Friday kicked off of most mainstream social media platforms. 

Greenwald, part of a team that won a Pulitzer for reports about government surveillance programs based on leaks by Edward Snowden, tweeted: 'For years, I heard it's invalid to object to political censorship by FB & Twitter because, if you don't like it, you can just create a competing social media platform. 

'Parler tried. And in 24 hours, Google, Apple & Amazon united to destroy it. That's what monopoly power means.' 

Parler's CEO John Matze told Fox News Sunday that the decision was 'devastating'. 

He said: 'They all work together to make sure at the same time we would lose access to not only our apps, but they're actually shutting all of our servers off tonight, off the internet.'

'They made an attempt to not only kill the app, but to actually destroy the entire company.' 

The app will 'likely' go down for up to a week Sunday evening, Matze said. 

Glenn Greenwald has claimed 'far more violence' has been planned on Facebook

The journalist tweeted Sunday to accuse the tech giants of 'feigning offense to destroy' the app after Donald Trump was on Friday kicked off of most mainstream social media platforms

Sharing a 2019 link to a New York Times article headlined 'How YouTube Radicalized Brazil' Greenwald added: 'Far more violence has been planned on Facebook than on Parler, including at the Capitol & many other violent protests as well. 

'Google-owned YouTube has long algorithmically promoted right-wing extremism. Now they're feigning offense to destroy Parler.' 

The far right-friendly Parler had been the leading candidate for Trump to continue to reach his followers, at least until Google, Apple and Amazon made the moves. 

The far right-friendly Parler had been the leading candidate for Trump to continue to reach his followers, at least until Google, Apple and Amazon made the moves

Who is Parler's CEO John Matze?

Parler's CEO John Matze told Fox News Sunday that the decision by the tech giants against his company was 'devastating'

Matze, who describes himself as libertarian, founded Parler in 2018 as a 'free-speech driven' alternative to mainstream platforms but began courting right-leaning users as prominent supporters of Trump moved there.  

It is bankrolled by hedge-fund investor Robert Mercer's daughter Rebekah, the Wall Street Journal reported in November. Rebekah has described herself as a co-founder of the site with Matze. 

Both studied computer science program at the University of Denver. 

After graduating in 2014 Matze teamed up with fellow alumni Jared Thomson, now chief technical officer, to create Parler. 

Matze married Russian Alina Mukhutdinova after the pair reportedly met in Las Vegas.

Alina's Instagram profile shows the couple have at least one child.  

Those who have joined include commentator Candace Owens, Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and right-wing activist Laura Loomer, who handcuffed herself to the door of Twitter's New York office in November 2018 to protest a ban on her by the site.

Matze had earlier said that could knock it offline for a week, though that might prove optimistic. And even if it finds a friendlier web-hosting service, without a smartphone app, it's hard to imagine Parler gaining mainstream success.

The two-year-old magnet for the far right claims more than 12 million users, though mobile app analytics firm Sensor Tower puts the number at 10 million worldwide, with 8 million in the U.S. That's a fraction of the 89 million followers Trump had on Twitter.

Still, Parler might be attractive to Trump since it's where his sons Eric and Don Jr. are already active. Parler hit headwinds, though, on Friday as Google yanked its smartphone app from its app store for allowing postings that seek 'to incite ongoing violence in the U.S.' 

Apple followed suit on Saturday evening after giving Parler 24 hours to address complaints it was being used to 'plan and facilitate yet further illegal and dangerous activities.' 

Public safety issues will need to be resolved before it is restored, Apple said.

A message seeking comment from Parler was sent Sunday on whether the company plans to change its policies and enforcement around these issues.

Amazon struck another blow Saturday, informing Parler it would need to look for a new web-hosting service effective midnight Sunday. 

It reminded Parler in a letter, first reported by Buzzfeed, that it had informed it in the past few weeks of 98 examples of posts 'that clearly encourage and incite violence' and said the platform 'poses a very real risk to public safety.'

Parler CEO John Matze decried the punishments as 'a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the marketplace. We were too successful too fast,' he said in a Saturday night post, saying it was possible Parler would be unavailable for up to a week 'as we rebuild from scratch.'

'Every vendor, from text message services, to e-mail providers, to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day,' Matze said Sunday on Fox New Channel´s 'Sunday Morning Futures.' 

He said while the company is trying to get back online as quickly as possible, it´s 'having a lot of trouble, because every vendor we talk to says they won´t work with us, because, if Apple doesn´t approve and Google doesn´t approve, they won´t.'

Losing access to the app stores of Google and Apple - whose operating systems power hundreds of millions of smartphones - severely limits Parler´s reach, though it will continue to be accessible via web browser. 

Losing Amazon Web Services will mean Parler needs to scramble to find another web host, in addition to the re-engineering.

Trump may also launch his own platform. But that won't happen overnight, and free speech experts anticipate growing pressure on all social media platforms to curb incendiary speech as Americans take stock of Wednesday´s violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol by a Trump-incited mob.

Twitter ended Trump´s nearly 12-year run on Friday. In shuttering his account, it cited a tweet to his 89 million followers that he planned to skip President-elect Joe Biden´s Jan. 20 inauguration, saying it gave rioters license to converge on Washington once again.

Though stripped of his Twitter account for inciting rebellion, President Donald Trump does have alternative options of much smaller reach

Twitter ended Trump´s nearly 12-year run on Friday. In shuttering his account, it cited a tweet to his 89 million followers that he planned to skip President-elect Joe Biden´s Jan. 20 inauguration, saying it gave rioters license to converge on Washington once again

Parler is bankrolled by prominent conservative donor Rebekah Mercer 

Parler, which styles itself as a 'free speech-driven' space, is bankrolled by hedge-fund investor Robert Mercer's daughter Rebekah, the Wall Street Journal reported in November. 

Rebekah has described her as a co-founder of the site with CEO John Matze.  

'John and I started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech, as our founders intended, and also to create a social media environment that would protect data privacy,' she wrote in a post on the site this fall.

'The ever increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords demands that someone lead the fight against data mining, and for the protection of free speech online,' she added.

Hedge-fund investor Robert Mercer is pictured with his daughter Rebekah in 2017

Matze replied to the post: 'Bekah is a great friend, an American patriot, and most importantly committed to the Parler vision of neutrality and data privacy. We are grateful for her support since 2018, and her early faith in the founders has enabled us to reach these heights. #transparency.'  

After WSJ reported Rebekah's links to Parler she issued a statement saying that her multi-millionaire father Robert was not an investor in the site - while sources close to the clan claimed that the investment was a family affair. 

Rebekah referred to herself as a co-founder of Parler in a post on the site in November

Facebook and Instagram have suspended Trump at least until Inauguration Day. Twitch and Snapchat also disabled Trump´s accounts, while Shopify took down online stores affiliated with the president and Reddit removed a Trump subgroup. 

Twitter also banned Trump loyalists including former national security advisor Michael Flynn in a sweeping purge of accounts promoting the QAnon conspiracy theory and the Capitol insurrection. Some had hundreds of thousands of followers.

In a statement Friday, Trump said: 'We have been 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.'

Gab is another potential landing spot for Trump. But it, too, has had troubles with internet hosting. Google and Apple both booted it from their app stores in 2017 and it was left internet-homeless for a time the following year due to anti-Semitic posts attributed to the man accused of killing 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Microsoft also terminated a web-hosting contract.

Online speech experts expect social media companies led by Facebook, Twitter and Google's YouTube to more vigorously police hate speech and incitement in the wake of the Capitol rebellion, as Western democracies led by Nazism-haunted Germany already do.

David Kaye, a University of California-Irvine law professor and former U.N. special rapporteur on free speech believes the Parlers of the world will also face pressure from the public and law enforcement as will little-known sites where further pre-inauguration disruption is now apparently being organized. They include MeWe, Wimkin, TheDonald.win and Stormfront, according to a report released Saturday by The Alethea Group, which tracks disinformation.

Kaye rejects arguments by U.S. conservatives including the president´s former U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, that the Trump ban savaged the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from restricting free expression. 'Silencing people, not to mention the President of the US, is what happens in China not our country,' Haley tweeted.

'It´s not like the platforms´ rules are draconian. People don´t get caught in violations unless they do something clearly against the rules,' said Kaye. And not just individual citizens have free speech rights. 'The companies have their freedom of speech, too.'

While initially arguing their need to be neutral on speech, Twitter and Facebook gradually yielded to public pressure drawing the line especially when the so-called Plandemic video emerged early in the coronavirus pandemic urging people not to wear masks, noted civic media professor Ethan Zuckerman of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Zuckerman expects the Trump de-platforming may spur important online shifts. First, there may be an accelerated splintering of the social media world along ideological lines.

'Trump will pull a lot of audience wherever he goes,' he said. That could mean more platforms with smaller, more ideologically isolated audiences.