They banned the app because the moderation policies allowed for said insurrection attempt to occur. There are tons of posts explicitly calling for violence that violate Parler's Terms of Service, yet have not been removed from Parler, meaning that there's a failure to moderate the platform. If Parler actually moderated its content to prevent users from plotting insurrection, the app would probably not have been removed. But the whole draw of Parler is that it never would have removed that content. Since high-profile Parler users were promoting Stop the Steal and potential violence, the app's userbase would see removal as a violation of "free speech social media" and move on from Parler to the next thing that allows them to talk about it.

It's not punishing all Parler users for the actions of a small group on Parler, it's punishing Parler itself for failing to keep that small group from breaking its own rules, along with Apple's, Google's, Amazon's, etc. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Here's the transcript of the deleted video statemenet: "I know your pain. Your hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us. From me, from you and from our country.

This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So, go home, we love you, you’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You’ve seen the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace."

Deleted tweets: "Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!"

"These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!"

So the deleted video contained the usual claim of the election being "fraudulent", and these imperatives:

"But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. ... We have to have peace. So, go home, we love you, you’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You’ve seen the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace."

Why exactly was it deleted?

It seems like unfortunate timing - Facebook's cracking down on fake accounts before the election right as the Quest 2 launches. I'd guess that a lot of the people signing up for Facebook just for the Quest don't follow the same patterns as a typical user, so the algorithm flags them and removes them. I'm sure they'll get reinstated once Facebook manually reviews, but it's definitely a major annoyance.

Sidenote, I got my quest 2 yesterday and from a hardware standpoint, it's blown me away coming from PSVR. Too bad the Facebook nonsense keeps it from being a must have product.

> It seems like unfortunate timing - Facebook's cracking down on fake accounts before the election right as the Quest 2 launches.

No, this isn't new, more people are just seeing it now since they just expanded the market of users.

It has been like this for years: If you go out of your way to create an account disconnected from a social graph so that it doesn't creepily alert people that would have saved your number/email and uploaded all their contacts in the past, Facebook will ban the account within 10 minutes.

Somebody's inevitable rebuttal: "Yeah but my grandma just made an account and didn't get banned"

Okay, good for you. The described reality here is also valid.

To make it not ban the account you can upload a contact photo and try to friend request multiple people in a social graph. The time limit is very short and you will otherwise very quickly get instabanned or stuck in a security verification loop where the verification never comes.

This is just creepy Facebook behavior for their data mining operation, now masquaraded as "ensuring quality of accounts". This is the same behavior as when they use insecure SMS one time passwords instead of client side code generation, and then use that phone number to add it to the social graph.

Their behavior is very consistent and there is no one individual there responsible for it and even understands the use case.

In this case, this is just another byproduct of Facebook employees living in the warped reality where everyone loves the Facebook product and has it. They honestly believe it there and you should see how confused and affronted they will act when you tell them you don't have an account.

This is just a byproduct of that sentiment.

This description makes alot of sense and further convinces me that Facebook especially needs some steep regulation to curb that behavior... or disappear.

That's not anti-US sentiment, it's satire critiquing the "all lives matter" crowd. Everyone who posts that message still thinks that 9/11 is a national tragedy - in fact, that's why the comparison to "all lives matter" is apt.