Parler is not down due to a single company but because the market chose not to do business with it because it's toxic, which is the nature of a free market
I've delayed writing deeper thoughts on the total deplatforming of Parler, in part because there was so much else happening … Tweets: @benhixonva , @erratarob , @mcwm , @tynanpants , @jonjones , @erratarob , @chuq , @erratarob , @evan_greer , @erratarob , @bdowney , @mmasnick , and @kantrowitz See also Mediagazer Tweets: Ben Hixon / @benhixonva : Good take from @mmasnick: “Any business has to build relationships with other businesses to survive ... lots of companies just don't want to associate with Parler. And that is basically the free market telling Parler to get its act together.” https://www.techdirt.com/... @erratarob : Now which side is “free enterprise” has reversed itself. Now when Amazon/Twitter/Facebook cave to outside pressure, it's okay, because it's not the government forcing them, just private groups. Mike Murphy / @mcwm : “If you are so toxic that companies don't want to do business with you, that's on you. Not them.” https://www.techdirt.com/... @tynanpants : Still mulling this one over myself. Mike raises some great points as always—surviving as a business requires building relationships, and at a certain point your complete inability to do so is on you. I remain troubled, not as much by this incident as by the era it presages. https://twitter.com/... Jon Jones / @jonjones : This is a thoughtful, nuanced read and well worth the time. https://twitter.com/... @erratarob : It's like the change in fighting Eurasia and East Asia in 1984. Here, the change is how “censorship” was defined in the 1980s and 1990s when it was Christians pressuring radio stations and MTV. Now it's somehow no longer “censorship” when people pressure Twitter/Facebook. @chuq : There are some things that do not deserve to exist. Be glad to not be the person that has to make that decision. Someone who thinks the choice is east isn't qualified to make it. https://twitter.com/... @erratarob : But logically, it's not “free enterprise”. Twitter suspended @realDonaldTrump not because it was best for profits, maximizing shareholder returns. They did it because they caved to outside pressure. Same with Amazon canceling Parler. Evan Greer / @evan_greer : Everyone should read this thoughtful post from @mmasnick. While I don't disagree with the conclusion, that removing Parker was reasonable even at the infrastructure layer, I take issue with this part. It wasn't that long ago most brands didn't want associate with LGBTQ content https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... @erratarob : That's been the argument against Facebook for a couple of years: they aren't doing the “right thing” censoring right-wing content because they are capitalists concerned about profits. Brandon Downey / @bdowney : Masnick does a good job thinking through the arguments here. I think these are the only two places I'd differ: 1. I think Apple deserves more scrutiny because they have such a closed ecosystem. I think it's still reasonable to give Parler the boot because, well, crimes. https://twitter.com/... Mike Masnick / @mmasnick : So I finally wrote up my thoughts on the Parler total deplatforming. I started with the belief that I was uncomfortable with it, but as I dug into each aspect of it, I couldn't find any reason to support my original discomfort. https://www.techdirt.com/... Alex Kantrowitz / @kantrowitz : Excited to share a new feature I wrote for @ozm: Where the content moderation war goes now that Facebook, Twitter, YouTube have warmed to moderation. Next up: A battle over content on smaller, mainstream networks like Substack, Spotify, Clubhouse. https://onezero.medium.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
The deplatforming of Parler followed a cascade: after [[a:961948|Trump's bans on Facebook and Twitter sent alternative social apps to the top of the app stores]], Amazon canceled Parler's hosting while other vendors refused service in parallel — no single company acted alone. Techdirt's argument reframes the episode: any business depends on relationships with other businesses, and those partners simply declined to associate with Parler.
The market verdict proved durable. By late 2022, [[a:983989|Parler was down to roughly 50,000 daily users and its parent Parlement was shopping the network at a price buyers wouldn't meet]], while platforms broadly treated content moderation as an existential cost they structure their rules to avoid.
First-order effects
- Amazon's hosting cancellation plus parallel refusals from app stores and other vendors left Parler without the infrastructure stack any social network needs to operate, an exclusion imposed by many counterparties at once rather than one regulator or platform.
- Parler's user base — the audience that had surged after Trump's bans pushed alternatives up the app charts — had no service to migrate to, freezing the network's growth at the moment demand for it peaked.
Second-order effects
- Competing 'free speech' platforms now face the same dependency web: hosting, payments, and app-store distribution are each a choke point any coalition of vendors can pull, so new entrants must manage business relationships, not just speech rules.
- The episode hands platforms a template for market-based exclusion without formal regulation — and simultaneously hands Parler's defenders a grievance narrative, pushing the dispute toward antitrust and Section 230 fights rather than private negotiation.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, platform governance effectively moves upstream to infrastructure providers — hosting and distribution become the de facto moderation layer, with 'the market' doing what regulators have not, and the line between business preference and coordinated gatekeeping becoming the central legal question.
- The Parler outcome — collapse to a marginal user base and an unsellable asset — sets the economic precedent that alternative platforms cannot survive on ideology alone if mainstream infrastructure and advertisers withdraw, shaping how future entrants architect their dependencies.
The trend: Platform exclusion is shifting from single-company moderation decisions to market-wide infrastructure gatekeeping, where hosting, payments, and app distribution collectively determine which social networks can exist.