After his social media platform was largely wiped off the internet, John Matze, CEO and co-founder of Parler, says he was fired by his own board, according to a memo Fox News received and an SMS confirmation he sent Reuters.
Parler is, of course, the social network that has completely weakened itself after its role in the January 6 riots at the American Capitol. Both Apple and Google removed the app from their app stores after they were dissatisfied with the company’s efforts to moderate the spread of calls to violence. Amazon has decided to completely discontinue the company’s AWS website hosting. And although Parler tried to sue Amazon, a judge denied a claim that his website hosting should be reinstated.
On January 10, Matze told Fox News that all the company’s entrepreneurs – and even his lawyers – had let him down.
Today, Matze claims that he was terminated by a board led by Rebekah Mercer, and that according to his memo, he had ‘constant resistance to my product vision’. It could also have something to do with the business ending up under the clock in the ground. In addition to the difficulty of simply staying on the Internet, it came to light that Parler may have had privacy issues. Researchers were able to scrape a huge amount of user content, including their tagged sites and videos, which were later converted into interactive maps of the Capitol attack that proved many Parler users were involved.
The Home Guard Committee even called for an FBI investigation into Parler’s involvement in the attack on the Capitol.
Parler currently has a website again thanks to the hosting services of Epik, a company that also supports controversial sites like Gab and 8chan, and although Parler originally suggested there that he hopes to welcome everyone back soon, the site mostly has a timeline of grievances about how the company was treated unfairly. Matze has not posted there since Monday, January 26th. His last post was a Bernie Sanders meme:
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Parler did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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