Kate Mills
Dec 20, 2023
Conservative social media site Parler has announced its comeback four months after it underwent a setback due to some stirred-up controversies and illicit content on it.
According to an official statement released by the company, Parler is set to relaunch in the first quarter of 2024 to “return to its roots as a robust marketplace of ideas,” reported CNN.
First launched in 2018, it was famed for having a conservative audience in its prime, especially the masses who were annoyed by the rules to express themselves on other social platforms. Twitter had deactivated numerous accounts over the contravention of its speech policies at that time, including far-right figures such as Andrew Tate, Alex Jones and even President Donald Trump.
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The owner of Parler
As the platform has been sold again this week, Ryan Rhodes, Parler’s new CEO, said he expected the app to be back by Jan 1 with a full relaunch by February. The app was taken off in April 2023 after a conglomerate Starboard bought it and pulled the plug temporarily.
Parler has now come into the hands of PDS Partners, a Texas-based firm reviving it.
“Our mission is clear: to provide a secure and inclusive environment for open dialogue,” Rhodes said in a statement. “While not aiming to compete with Truth Social, our monitoring measures are dedicated to keeping harmful content like terrorism, child porn, and trafficking off our platform.”
Why Parler was shut
According to Google, Parler’s discontinuation was driven by the dearth of content regulation policies, including ways for users to report objectionable content and the ability to remove users who violated the app’s terms of service.
Besides the typical norms and activities of any social networking site, Parler became a central stage for forms of hate speech and misinformation, including claims denying elections.
Since abusers were taking it as a platform to organise events like the Jan 6th Capitol attack, the platform was detached from major app stores, with Apple and Google kicking Parler off their stores, and Amazon removing it from its web hosting service.
“We prefer not to continue to be associated with the events of January 6th,” company spokeswoman Elise Pierotti revealed in a statement to CNN.
“Our primary goal with this relaunch is to return Parler to its original vision—a marketplace of ideas open to everyone,” she added.
