Caught in the midst of serious controversy pertaining to the Jan. 6th attack on the US Capitol building, Parler, a social network popular within the right-wing community has faced a lot of strict situations from bigger tech companies like Google and Apple and lastly Amazon which led to the service being ousted from all of these services ultimately leading to the demise of the social media service.
The CEO and co-founder of Parler has been fired by the company’s board of directors as reported by Fox News, the Wall Street Journal as well as a text sent over by he former CEO John Matze to Reuters. To further confirm this, his LinkedIn page also showed that his employment status ends on January 2021.
The cause of this is yet unknown but it’s suggested that due to the current situation of things in the company, John Matze is probably not seen as the right person to help the company again it ground. With Parler being ousted on Google Play Store, its chances with Android users becomes really slim but that also extends to other platforms as well such as Apple and Amazon web service where the website’s data is being hosted.
According to John Matze back in Jan. 10th, he stated during an interview with Fox News that the company’s vendors as well as its lawyers had abandoned the company and finally, he was also ousted by the company he helped co-found.
A board led by Rebekah Mercer fired John Matze as CEO of Parler and in his words, he stated that his termination is due to his strong “belief in free speech” and his product vision including “what I believe is a more effective approach to content moderation.”
Parler also had some internal privacy issues which led to the privacy of its users being scraped by by a a website called Facesoftheriot which geotagged locations and videos for FBI investigation of those who partook in the Capitol building riot back in January 6th.
The House Oversight Committee even called for an FBI investigation into Parler’s involvement in the attack on the Capitol. While the service seems to be back online through Epik, its new host, the service was expected to have kicked back as early as Jan. 17th and Matze’s account post since Jan. 26th has not been updated.
Parler didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
