John Matze said he was fired as CEO of Parler, one of the social services used to plan Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump.
Matze’s announcement followed on Wednesday Amazon’s January 11 decision to remove Parler from its web hosting service because of his refusal to eliminate posts calling for the killing, rape and torture of politicians, technology directors and others. Google and Apple have removed the Parler app from their online stores.
Matze, in a post on the professional networking site LinkedIn, thanked Parler employees. “This is not a goodbye. Just so much for now,” he wrote.
LinkedIn’s page shows a termination date of January 2021:
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Matze linked to a Fox Business report citing a note to employees saying he was fired on Jan. 29 by the Parler board controlled by Conservative donor Rebekah Mercer.
“The Parler Council, controlled by Rebekah Mercer, has decided to terminate my position as Parler’s CEO immediately,” the statement said. “I did not participate in this decision.”
He was quoted as saying in the note that, “in recent months, I have encountered constant resistance to my vision of the product, my strong belief in freedom of expression and my view of how the Parler site should be managed.”
But in a Facebook video confirming Matze’s dismissal, Parler co-founder Dan Bongino challenges Matze’s account and describes Parler’s struggles at higher levels.
Referring to Matze’s claims that he was a strong advocate of free speech and product stability, Bongino said: “It’s not exactly … In fact, we were the ones who fought for Parler to be sustained. There have been some really bad decisions people have made. And listen, we’re not the ones spreading dirty laundry. It protects a company that is absolutely committed to freedom of expression … Were there two separate visions for the company … This vision of free speech? it was ours – the other owners of the company. “
“… The relationship with Parler and the CEO did not work, because the CEO’s vision was not ours. … Our vision was clear. We needed to stand up and fight. Some terrible decisions have been made in the past. to lead us … to be overthrown by Amazon and others. We were … me and the other two owners who were constantly on the side of this site, we will be a platform of free expression or it will be nothing.
“… We could have been (back) in a week if we had bent our knees and followed all the ridiculous Apple edicts to become a hard-to-moderate site on Twitter. That’s not what we’re going to do … … We were a free speech site and we’re going to stay that way and that’s why it took so long to come back. ”
A federal judge on January 22 rejected Parler’s request to order Amazon to restore the web service. Seattle District Judge Barbara Rothstein said she did not reject Parler’s claims against Amazon.
Matze, who co-founded Parler in 2018, said in a court case that Parler’s sudden closure was motivated at least in part by “the desire to deny President Trump a platform for any large-scale social media service.”
Parler has seen an increase in the number of users after Twitter banned Mr. Trump amid pressure to stop the incendiary speech following the January 6 attack that resulted in five deaths. Mr. Trump was also banned from Facebook and Instagram.
Mr. Trump thought of joining Parler under a pseudonym, Matze said.
He told Parler “he has no tolerance for inciting violence or breaking the law” and relied on volunteer “jurors” to signal problematic posts and vote on whether they should be removed.
Amazon said the suspension was a “last resort” to block Parler from having violent plans to disrupt the presidential transition.