The board of directors of social media platform Parler has terminated the employment of its chief executive, John Matze.
According to a report on the BBC, Matze himself revealed the news in a memo to Parler’s staff yesterday, but didn’t mention any reason for the board’s decision.
“On January 29, 2021, the… board controlled by Rebekah Mercer decided to immediately terminate my position as CEO of Parler. I did not participate in this decision,” Mr Matze said in the memo. “I understand that those who now control the company have made some communications to employees and other third parties that have unfortunately created confusion and prompted me to make this public statement.”
“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… site should be managed,” the memo said. “I have worked endless hours and fought constant battles to get the Parler site running but at this point, the future of Parler is no longer in my hands.”
Calling for a Parler-ay
While it doesn’t boast as many users as many other social media platforms, Parler gained traction last year after the 2020 US election, becoming the most downloaded app in the USA. It was attractive to conservatives given it has a much looser set of terms and conditions about what content can be posted on it.
The app has been largely offline since the Capitol riots that took place in Washington in January of this year. It’s been delisted from the Google and Apple apps stores, due to the fact that social media platform was not willing or able to police the content on the app that was inciting violence.
[Source: BBC]