The free speech-friendly social network Parler, which was launched in 2018 during the peak of Big Tech censorship, has been shut down while its new owners, Starboard Media, conducted a strategic review.
However, the company assures it will continue to support constrained communities in the future.
Starboard commended Parler CEO George Farmer for effectively directing Parler into new areas such as cloud services, as mentioned in its news release.
According to Ryan Coyne, CEO of Starboard, “Parler’s large user base and additional strategic assets represent an enormous opportunity for Starboard to continue to build aggressively in our media and publishing business. The team at Parler has built an exceptional audience and we look forward to integrating that audience across all of our existing platforms.”
As quoted from their press release, “While the Parler app as it is currently constituted will be pulled down from operation to undergo a strategic assessment, we at Starboard see tremendous opportunities across multiple sectors to continue to serve marginalized or even outright censored communities – even extending beyond domestic politics.
Advancements in AI technology, along with the existing code base and other new features, provide an opportunity for Starboard to begin servicing unsupported online communities – building a home for them away from the ad-hoc regulatory hand of platforms that hate them.
Parler has been shut down pending a strategic reassessment from its new owners, Starboard Media, although the company says it will continue to serve censored communities in the future. https://t.co/epmauHzhP0— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) April 15, 2023
These users were mostly attracted to Parler’s appeal because it was more accepting of conservative and right-wing viewpoints than Facebook or Twitter.
However, after the American revolution at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, this lenient moderation jeopardized Parler’s distribution and operations. Groups organized the attack through the app.
The Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon AWS reportedly threatened to stop the app’s distribution.
After announcing modifications to its moderation guidelines, Parler kept operating as usual. The company claimed that artificial intelligence had been utilized to enforce the new rules and policies.
Parler was one of the pioneer organizations to understand the need for social media that supports and promotes free speech, along with Gab, another social media platform designed to encourage online interaction, information dissemination, and promote free speech.
