“I’ve always been about free speech and everyone being welcome. I’ve never been about conservative political activism,” Mr. Matze said. But he said he had told Ms. Mercer that Parler needed to consider restricting domestic terrorists, white supremacists and members of QAnon, the baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory, from posting on the platform.
“I got dead silence as a response, and I took that dead silence as disagreement,” he said.
Millions of people began flocking to Parler, a platform similar to Twitter, after the November presidential election, when mainstream sites like Facebook and Twitter became more aggressive about curtailing hate speech and misinformation. Last month, after a mob of former President Donald J. Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, partly at Mr. Trump’s urging, Twitter and Facebook cut him off from their sites entirely.
But Parler was not able to capitalize on the interest from right-wing users for long. After Apple, Google and Amazon declined to work with the company, citing Parler’s lack of policing of its platform, the site went dark on Jan. 11.
Mr. Matze had been trying to find a way to get Parler back online. The company sued Amazon last month for antitrust violations. Parler also sought help from a Russian internet security company, DDoS-Guard, to get a basic webpage back up, though users have been unable to post.
Neither a Parler spokeswoman nor Ms. Mercer immediately responded to requests for comment.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/03/technology/parler-ceo-fired.html
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