Moderation Standards on Google Play and Apple’s App Store ⇥ axios.com

Helen Costner, Reuters:

Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s social media platform Truth Social has not yet been approved for distribution on Alphabet Inc’s Google Play Store due to insufficient content moderation, according to a Google spokesperson on Tuesday.

Sara Fischer, Axios:

A year and a half after it was removed from Google’s Play Store, Parler, a Twitter alternative that attracts conservatives, has returned to the showcase for Android apps.

[…]

The app is being reinstated in response to a slew of measures Parler has taken to moderate the content on its app, including allowing users to block and report other users and actively monitoring content for things like violent speech.

Truth Social has been available on the App Store in the U.S. since at least February which, according to the version history log, was its first release. It is not available in any other country. As Fischer reports, Apple removed Parler following the insurrection on January 6 2021, but it was allowed to return to the store in April the same year. It is curious to me that both of these apps have faced a harder time getting into Google’s marketplace than Apple’s, given the reputation of both companies. I doubt Google is really holding these apps to a higher standard; its policies for social networks are similar to Apple’s.