John Matze says he has been fired as CEO of Parler, one of the social media services used to plan the January 6. attack on the Capitol by supporters of then President Donald Trump.
Matze’s announcement followed on Wednesday Amazon’s decision on January 11 to remove Parler from its web hosting service about his reluctance to remove posts calling for the killing, rape and torture of politicians, technical managers and others. Google and Apple have removed Parler’s app from their online stores.
Matze thanked the employees of Parler in a message on the professional networking site LinkedIn. ‘This is not goodbye. Just as long, ‘he wrote.
His LinkedIn page has an employment termination date in January 2021:
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Matze linked to a Fox Business report in which he quoted a memo of his to employees stating that he was fired on Jan. 29 by Parler’s board led by conservative donor Rebekah Mercer.
“The Parler board led by Rebekah Mercer immediately decided to end my position as CEO of Parler,” the memo said. “I did not participate in this decision.”
In the memo, he said, “Over the past few months, I have encountered constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in freedom of expression, and my vision of how the Parler site should be managed.”
But in a Facebook video confirming Matze’s impeachment, Parler disputes co-founder Dan Bongino Matze’s account, describing infighting at Parler’s higher levels.
Referring to Matze’s claims that he was a strong advocate of freedom of speech and product stability, Bongino said, “That’s not right. … We were, in fact, the ones fighting to get Parler back on his feet. decisions made by people … on the inside … And listen, this is not us airing dirty laundry This protects a company that is absolutely committed to freedom of speech … There were two different visions for the company. .. This vision of freedom of speech? That was ours – the other owners of the company. “
“… The relationship with Parler and the CEO did not work out because the CEO’s vision was not ours.… Our vision was crystal clear. We had to get up and fight back. Some terrible decisions were made in the past. lead … us to be led by Amazon and others. It was … me and the two other owners who were constantly on the side of this site were going to become a platform for free speech or it would be nothing. “
“… We could have gotten up (again) in a week if we had just bent the knee and followed all the ridiculous Apple orders to become a heavy moderation site links from Twitter. That’s not what we’re going to do . … We were and will continue to be a site for freedom of speech and that’s why it took so long to get back up. ”
A federal judge on Jan. 22 rejected Parler’s request to order Amazon to restore the web service. Seattle Judge Barbara Rothstein said she did not dismiss Parler’s claims against Amazon.
Matze, who co-founded Parler in 2018, said in a lawsuit that Parler’s abrupt shutdown was prompted at least in part by “a desire to deny President Trump a platform on a major social media service.”
Parler then experienced a wave of users Twitter banned Mr. Trump under pressure to curb incendiary language after the January 6 attack that resulted in five deaths. Mr. Trump was also banned by Facebook and Instagram.
Trump was considering joining Parler under a pseudonym, Matze said.
He told the court that Parler “has no tolerance for incitement to violence or violations of law” and relies on volunteer “jurors” to flag problem posts and vote on whether to remove them.
Amazon said the suspension was a “last resort” to dissuade Parler from fostering violent plans to disrupt the presidential transition.