The digital-media conglomerate, Starboard which acquired Parler, a free speech social media platform, temporarily took it offline on Friday, according to a company statement by Founder and CEO Ryan Coyne.
Starboard (formerly Olympic Media) is temporarily shutting down Parler while the company works on a strategy to launch a new and improved version, according to the statement.
“No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more. By refocusing on the cloud and IT infrastructure space George Farmer has done an exceptional job at successfully leading Parlement into a critically important industry where it has already begun to excel,” said a statement Friday.
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“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.” said Ryan Coyne, CEO of Starboard.
Parler’s parent company, Parlement Technologies Inc., revealed that it sold the platform to Starboard following a deal with Kanye “Ye” West that fell through, according to the WSJ.
“In response to numerous media inquiries, Parlement Technologies would like to confirm that the company has mutually agreed with Ye to terminate the intent of sale of Parler,” Parler tweeted on Dec. 1, 2022, the same day Ye went on Alex Jones’ InfoWars and defended Nazis. Parlement previously announced Ye was going to acquire Parler in October.
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Parler was founded in 2018 and marketed as a less-censored alternative to Twitter, according to the WSJ. Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores and Amazon ceased providing Parler with web hosting after the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 due to people using the platform to organize it.
In February, a Forbes analysis revealed people used Facebook much more than Parler in the organization of the riots.
Parler was reinstated in the major app stores after updating its moderation method and has around 250,000 monthly users, according to the WSJ. Twitter could rival Parler as people perceive it as warmer toward conservatives since Elon Musk took over.
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