By Bruce Rolff @ Shutterstock.com
If you own a business that relies on big-technology companies or if you work for a firm whose business relies on big-tech, it’s time to start looking for alternatives.
Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter, to name the big ones, can literally put you out of business overnight.
Apple and Google banned Parler from their app stores over the weekend, following an influx of new users. Parler is an alternative to Twitter.
No big deal, right? Apple is a private company and can ban businesses from its app store if it so chooses. Indeed, it can, but Apple also prevents users from downloading any app from outside of the App Store. That’s done under the auspices of security, but it has little to do with security and much to do with maintaining monopolistic power in the app market. If you want to create an app that can be used by millions of iPhone owners, you have to pay Apple a toll. Hopefully, the regulators and courts are paying attention.
Well, you may think, so what if Apple banned Parler, users can just go to Parler’s website. That’s true in theory, but Parler made the mistake of hosing its website on Amazon Web Services. A group of Amazon employees called Amazon Employees for Climate Justice demanded that the firm stop providing services to Parler. And so about 24 hours later, Amazon stopped hosting Parler on its servers.
Parler is now gone from the internet and fighting for its survival.
Social media apps weren’t the only businesses attacked by the big-tech cabal.
Shopify shut down e-commerce sites affiliated with Trump, and Stripe, a payments processor, said it will stop processing payments for Trump’s campaign website.
Do you really want your company’s fate determined by some snot nosed kid who thinks he has the world figured out at 23?
