Parler came back online this weekend with a message on it’s website saying it plans to welcome us all back soon. Apparently John Matze, Parler’s CEO, is confident he’ll have the social media website back up and running by the end of the month:
FOX NEWS – Parler chief executive officer John Matze is “confident” that his social media platform will be back online in the near future after his team was able to launch a static website and recover the company’s data over the weekend in a series of positive developments.
“I’m confident that by the end of the month, we’ll be back up,” Matze told Fox News during a telephone interview on Sunday night.
Parler registered its domain with host sharing website Epik last week, following Amazon Web Services’ decision to shut Parler down for failure to moderate “egregious content” related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. The move was a tiny-yet-important step that helped Matze realize his aggressive timeframe for Parler’s eventual return is realistic.
“Every day it changes wildly, but I feel confident now,” Matze said. “We’re making significant progress. When you go into Parler.com it doesn’t go into the void now, it hits a server, and it returns just one piece of information”
Parler had been down since Amazon Web Services cut it off, but now fan of the popular social media platform are at least able to hear from Matze himself.
Here’s the message from Matze on the website:
Parler finally got their data back from Amazon last Friday, which was a big step in the right direction:
“We’re going to be putting periodic updates there,” Matze said “We’re going to try to get an update out every day… so that people can stay up to date with the site.”
Parler is suing Amazon for its decision to sever ties, claiming the move is “motivated by political animus” and is both a breach of contract and an antitrust violation. Amazon had nothing to do with Parler resurfacing online, as Matze’s team got the page up independently.
However, Matze did manage to recover Parler’s data from Amazon on Friday, a key step into eventually relaunching – and another major step in the right direction.
“Now we can actually rebuild Parler,” Matze said. “It’s critically important.”
But didn’t Matze say Parler my never return? Sorta…
Matze explained that recent headlines indicating Parler might “never” return that surfaced last week were the result of a lengthy Reuters interview when the then-frustrated CEO answered, “It could be never… we don’t know yet,” when asked about a timeframe for the return of the platform. While Matze did suggest the site could be done forever, he says it was simply a pessimistic moment that the mainstream media ran with.
The progress has changed Matze’s tone over the past 72 hours.
The Parler CEO was upbeat and positive on Sunday, eager to explain that his staffers have stood by him throughout the chaos of the past two weeks.
“Despite all of this, we haven’t even had one employee quit,” Matze said. “Not one, even with them being harassed and threatened, no one has quit… we’ve got such a strong team, this has just made them believe in us more.”
I’m glad things are looking up for Parler and I can’t wait for the service to be back up and running again. What’s been done to them was egregious, however I’m sure they’ve learned some hard lessons about who you can trust and who you can’t. Hopefully when they are fully rebuilt, no one will be able to touch them again. Apple has said they can return to the App store if they improve their moderation techniques – I guess we’ll see if that’s really true.