Parler board fires founder and CEO John Matze
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The founder and CEO of right-wing Twitter alternative Parler, John Matze, has been fired. The controversial app is currently offline due to the lack of content moderation.
After the riots in front of the Capitol in Washington, which are also said to have been incited by the right-wing popular app Parler, Google and Apple threw the Twitter alternative out of their app stores. Amazon’s cloud service AWS refused Parler to continue using the infrastructure. Official reason: Parler, which sees itself as “the first address for free speech”, does not moderate the content of its users adequately. The result: Parler has been largely offline since mid-January. The founder and CEO John Matze has now been fired.
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Matze sacked as CEO by Parler board of directors
In a letter to his company’s employees, Matze stated that the board of directors decided on January 29 to remove him from his CEO position with immediate effect. He himself was not involved in this decision. Matze accuses the board of directors, and particularly the influential conservative donor Rebekah Mercer, of having fired him for disagreements, such as Zeit Online reports. Mercer, according to Matze, did not like the fact that he was considering how to keep right-wing extremists and supporters of conspiracy myths away from Parler in the future.
An official confirmation of the Parler board of directors about the dismissal of Matze as CEO is not yet available. However, the conservative talk show host Dan Bongino, who like Mercer has invested in Parler, responded to the former CEO’s allegations via Facebook. Matze tries to pass his responsibility for “really bad decisions” that led to the shutdown of Parler to others. Bongino Matze also had problems with the app stability according to the Wall Street Journal at. Matze decided to bring the topic to the public. The Parler board wanted to treat the whole thing “like gentlemen,” said Bongino.
Parler was reportedly about to make a comeback
It is not known how things will go on with Parler. The app, with around 15 million users, was only a few days from a comeback before it was kicked out, according to Matze. To get Parler back into the app stores of the two big tech companies Apple and Google, the company would likely have to drastically tighten its content moderation. Apple boss Tim Cook had made a corresponding offer. Matze left it open whether the hoster Epik should play a role in the announced return.
