Chief of social media app Parler says board fired him
Al JazeeraParler, which has been removed from app stores and web hosting services, had become a platform for far-right groups. The board of Parler, a social media platform backed by Republican Party donor Rebekah Mercer and favoured by conservatives in the United States, has fired its Chief Executive Officer John Matze, he said. “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 Parler site should be managed.” He told Reuters that Parler now has an “executive committee” consisting of Matthew Richardson and Mark Meckler. ‘Free-speech driven’ Parler remains largely offline after being dropped by Seattle-based Amazon’s cloud-hosting division and the app stores of Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google following the January 6 siege of the US Capitol. The app has largely attracted US conservatives who disagree with rules around content on social media sites like Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc. Matze told Reuters on January 13 that Parler may be offline for good, but later pledged it would return stronger.