Parler Is Back Online With a New Hosting Service

by Kay Lee

Parler, the alternative social network popular with conservatives, is back online after a month of downtime. The platform has restored the accounts of its existing users, but will only start registering new users next week.

The platform's relaunch comes after major tech companies such as Google, Apple, and Amazon suspended the social media app after January's attack on the US Capitol because of violent threats on the platform.

Mark Meckler, who previously co-founded the right-wing group Tea Party Patriots, will be the new interim CEO of Parler.

"Parler is being run by an experienced team and is here to stay. We will thrive as the premier social media platform dedicated to free speech, privacy and civil dialogue," Meckler said.

According to him, the company's management has chosen new servers that are not controlled by the largest American IT corporations. Parler says its new website is built on "sustainable, independent technology and not reliant on so-called 'Big Tech' for its operations."

Parler is an alternative social media platform founded in 2018 by Rebekah Mercer, John Matze, and Jared Thomson. They came up with Parler because they were “exhausted with a lack of transparency in big tech, ideological suppression and privacy abuse,” as reads the app's website.

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Parler describes itself as politically unaffiliated, but after the 2020 US presidential election, the platform with rather loose moderation became popular with supporters of former US President Donald Trump and right-wing conservatives who were either banned on other platforms or disagreed with moderation policies of social networks like Facebook or Twitter.

However, Google and Apple banned the Nevada-based startup app for failing to remove posts they felt had incited violence. The tech giants distanced themselves from Parler after it became known that rioters who took part in the US Capitol siege had used the platform to organize the incident. A few days later, in the aftermath of the January 6th Capitol riot, Amazon removed Parler from its cloud hosting service, Amazon Web Services, for the same reason.

Even though old Parler users can now access the app, neither Apple nor Google have allowed the company to get back to their respective app stores.