Well., making statements with a logical and conservative basis is no longer possible in this environment. Instead, I'll offer this: If they let my Parler.com service come back, I'll be sure to pay my taxes. Otherwise, no free speech = no taxes. I have to admit, for a period of about 2-3 weeks, it was very cool to be able to communicate directly with Maria Bartiromo, Melania Trump, Donald Trump, Nikki Haley, and many others.
All of those people can use other services: twitter, facebook, etc. Trump was banned because he repeatedly broke the rules. The rules apply, and have applied, to everyone. Parler was shut down because they allowed speech that promoted violence. Other than that, no one really cared about your clown meetings. Go'head, don't pay your taxes ... and let us know how that works out.
Parler CEO John Matze fired as site fights to restore its online presence https://www.cbsnews.com/news/parler-ceo-john-matze-fired/ John Matze says he's been fired as CEO of Parler, which was among the social media services used to plan the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Matze's announcement Wednesday followed Amazon's Jan. 11 decision to remove Parler from its web-hosting service over its unwillingness to remove posts that called for the killing, rape and torture of politicians, tech executives and others. Google and Apple removed Parler's app from their online stores. Matze, in a post on the professional networking site LinkedIn, thanked Parler employees. "This is not a goodbye. Just a so long for now," he wrote. His LinkedIn page shows an employment termination date of January 2021: Matze linked to a report by Fox Business quoting a memo from him to employees that said he was fired Jan. 29 by the Parler board controlled by conservative donor Rebekah Mercer. "The Parler board controlled by Rebekah Mercer decided to immediately terminate my position as CEO of Parler," the memo said. "I did not participate in this decision." He was quoted as saying in the memo that, "Over the past few months, I've met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech and my view of how the Parler site should be managed." But in a Facebook video confirming Matze's ouster, Parler co-founder Dan Bongino disputes Matze's account and describes infighting at Parler's upper levels. Referring to Matze's assertions that he was a strong advocate of free speech and product stability, Bongino said, "That's not accurate. ... We were the ones in fact fighting to get Parler back up. There were some really bad decisions made by people on the inside. And listen, this isn't us airing dirty laundry. This is protecting a company that is absolutely committed to free speech. ... There were two separate visions for the company. ... This free speech vision? That was ours -- the other owners of the company." " ... The relationship with Parler and the CEO did not work out because the CEO's vision was not ours. ... Our vision was crystal clear. We needed to get up and fight back. Some terrible decisions were made in the past that lead ... us to getting pulled down by Amazon and others. It was ... me and the two other owners that were constantly on the side of this site was gonna be a free speech platform or it was gonna be nothing." " ... We could have been (back) up in a week if we just would have bent the knee and followed all the ridiculous Apple edicts to become a heavy moderation site to the left of Twitter. That's not what we're gonna do. ... We were a free speech site and will remain as such and that's why it's taken so long to get back up." A federal judge on Jan. 22 rejected Parler's request to order Amazon to restore web service. District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle said she wasn't dismissing Parler's claims against Amazon. Matze, who co-founded Parler in 2018, said in a court filing that Parler's abrupt shutdown was motivated at least partly by "a desire to deny President Trump a platform on any large social-media service." Parler experienced a surge in users after Twitter banned Mr. Trump amid pressure to curb incendiary speech following the Jan. 6 attack that resulted in five deaths. Mr. Trump also was banned by Facebook and Instagram. Mr. Trump contemplated joining Parler under a pseudonym, Matze said. He told the court Parler has "no tolerance for inciting violence or lawbreaking" and has relied on volunteer "jurors" to flag problem posts and vote on whether they should be removed. Amazon said the suspension was a "last resort" to block Parler from harboring violent plans to disrupt the presidential transition.
Let's get one thing clear, Parler isn't about free speech, never was, as is evident by leftist censorship on the platform. What they want is a marketable right-wing echo chamber.
Smart board move. Regardless of how I feel about it, the board saw the way to get the company back to operating is to get rid of the CEO - blame him, and apologize to AWS and Google and get their app back on by promising to institute new standards and play along. It won't work, of course, as they've alienated the people who made the app successful in the first place, but it is their only real move forward.
My oh my....this is got to be the quickest turnaround in US business history. 8 weeks ago he was on top of the world. There's that Tim Cook asshole at work...acting as dictator....we have so many now. Forget this "democracy" bullshit....that's a thing of the past. No doubt she was female and also a democrat. Parler had no chance. That's patently false. I was actually messaging him 2 weeks before the shutdown. Also on the site was Melania and Sarah Palin. That seems to be a good methodology. They could employ 2 levels of flagging...first with the software, and then review by the jurors. Of course, because it was Jeff Bezos way or the highway. Ultimate control freak. How long was he married ? Democracy in Big Tech ? What a joke.
Parler offered Trump's company 40% ownership of the app to make it his go-to social media platform https://www.businessinsider.com/par...t-ownership-deal-talks-ethics-concerns-2021-2 The Trump Organization held failed talks with Parler to become a part-owner, BuzzFeed News reported. Parler offered a 40% stake in exchange for Trump making the app his go-to social media platform. The talks could have violated anti-bribery laws, ethics experts told BuzzFeed. (More at above url)
Crocodile Tears... 'These people just want to censor me,' fired Parler CEO says free speech platform is trying to muzzle him https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2021/02/05/parler-censorship-fired-ceo-john-matze/4414041001/ John Matze, who was fired last week as CEO of Parler, said his former company, which purports to champion free speech, is trying to muzzle his. Shortly before an interview with USA TODAY, Matze said he received a written warning that he violated the terms of his confidentiality agreement by making disparaging statements and disclosing inside information to the media that could have “serious and material adverse effects on the business or reputation of the company.” Matze denies this. “That’s not the vision I had for the company,” Matze told USA TODAY. “These people just want to censor me. Obviously, my statement about their vision not aligning with mine must be true considering they are trying to stop me from speaking my mind.” According to Matze, Parler terminated him without severance and, in the email, indicated to him that it was stripping him of his equity in the company. The company could not be immediately reached for comment. Conservative political donor and Parler investor Rebekah Mercer, daughter of hedge-fund investor Robert Mercer, previously said she and Matze started Parler “to provide a neutral platform for free speech, as our founders intended” and in response to the “ever increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords.” In a memo to Parler staffers obtained by Fox News, Matze wrote: “On January 29, 2021, the Parler board controlled by Rebekah Mercer decided to immediately terminate my position as CEO of Parler. I did not participate in this decision.” arler's chief policy officer Amy Peikoff responded with this statement to USA TODAY: "Mr. Matze’s characterizations of the events and circumstances surrounding his termination from the Parler CEO position have been inaccurate and misleading." Parler is one of the social media platforms used by supporters of then-President Donald Trump to plan and chronicle the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-N.Y., asked the FBI to investigate Parler's role in the Jan. 6 attack. The violent chatter prompted Apple and Google to yank Parler from their app stores. Then Amazon, which hosted the Parler site, pulled the plug. Parler sued Amazon in federal court, claiming the web hosting service breached its contract with Parler. But in a preliminary ruling, the federal judge in the case sided with Amazon, saying that it was Parler that violated the terms of a contract by not removing violent and hateful speech flagged by Amazon. Matze made his case in the press, arguing that Facebook, Twitter and Google's YouTube were also used to organize support for the "save America" and "stop the steal" rally in Washington. According to a review of videos and other posts by ProPublica, Parler appeared to play a major role in the Capitol siege. A USA TODAY text analysis published this week showed that calls for civil war intensified on Parler as Trump urged his followers to march on the Capitol. Disagreements over how to regulate that kind of speech on the platform pitted Matze against Mercer, according to Matze. He urged Parler to crack down on Neo-Nazis and any other domestic terrorism groups that incite violence, but says his position was met with silence by Mercer. Still, he says the blame heaped on Parler is misplaced. “I don’t believe that any of these changes would have changed the outcome of the 6th," he said. "I believe that would have happened with or without social media due to growing political extremism.” "People would have still gathered, they would have still been upset and they would have still heard his speech, and they probably still would have stormed the Capitol," he said. "I think this is a failure of leadership really, in general. And it’s not just President Trump, but he is largely responsible for that." Launched in 2018, Parler positioned itself as a nonpartisan, free speech alternative to Facebook and Twitter with fewer restrictions on what people can say. Matze and Jared Thomson named it after the French word “to speak.” Investors include Mercer and media personality Dan Bongino. Parler took off during the contentious election cycle, surging from fewer than 1 million users to 15 million in January as users defected from Facebook and Twitter over their handling of Trump's voter fraud claims and their suspensions of the former president's accounts. As the social media platform grew, so did infighting over the platform’s future, according to Matze. Parler has been offline for nearly a month but was close to being restored when Parler ousted him, Matze said. When the platform is back up and running, he says he’s not sure he will remain on it. “I definitely want to troll for a bit on it,” Matze said. “I want to see if they’ll ban me.”