Parler, one of the Trump-era social media apps with little content moderation and popular among conservatives, has been sold again and plans to relaunch early next year in preparation for the 2024 presidential election. The new owner said Monday.
The app, known for being used by participants in the January 6, 2021 riots, re-enters a social media landscape increasingly crowded with platforms for conservative users — among them Donald Trump.・Includes Truth Social, which works closely with former President Trump. App X, formerly known as Twitter, has also become a center of right-wing debate since tech billionaire Elon Musk bought it and renamed it last year.
Parler’s new CEO Ryan Rose said he expects the app to be back online by January 1 and fully relaunched by February. Parler has been offline since April.
“Our mission is clear: to provide a safe and inclusive environment for open dialogue,” Rose said in a statement. “While not intended to compete with Truth Social, our monitoring measures are focused on removing harmful content such as terrorism, child pornography, and human trafficking from our platform.”
Elise Pierotti, a former Parler executive, said in a phone interview that Parler now has three co-owners: herself, Mr. Rose and anti-sex trafficking activist Jaco Buens. She said she purchased the app for an undisclosed amount on Dec. 15 from Starboard, the digital media company that acquired Parler in April. He said Booyens will become chief strategy officer and he will return as chief marketing officer, and Parler will be based in Plano, Texas.
Starboard and CEO Ryan Coyne did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday.
Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, tried to buy Parler last year. Pierotti said he is not involved with the new ownership group, but will be welcomed as a Parler user.
Founded in 2018, Parler was created in response to regulations against hate speech, misinformation, and other objectionable content on existing social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Parler offered a Twitter-like feed of posts, but with different content. It had lax rules on what people could say, including allowing false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Republican politicians such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz have also joined the app, but it has struggled to gain mainstream popularity or stay online in a tech industry dominated by giant corporations. Amazon dropped Parler as a cloud computing customer and battled with Apple and Google over access to its app store.
Pierotti said the new Parler will have its own servers in the U.S. and won’t have to rely on Amazon Web Services or similar vendors.
“We have all of that in-house, so we’re not following orders from another company,” she said.
Parler was one of the apps used to plan the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters, leading to a ban from several internet hosting services, including Apple’s app store.
Pierotti said he was confident a revamped Parler would be available in Apple and Google’s app stores, and despite the app’s lax speech rules, both tech giants are still behind Musk’s “X” app. He said he was setting a precedent by allowing stores to do so. X also tolerates pro-Nazis. content.
“As long as you have access to the app store the way X operates, I don’t see any reason why you can’t do that,” Pierotti said.
Pierotti said she and the other new co-owners were not ready to make Parler’s new speech rules public. She said the rules would follow the First Amendment’s broad tolerance for offensive speech, including hate speech.
“I’m one of those people who believes hate speech is different for different people. I’m not the arbiter of truth,” she said.
However, she added that the app aims to limit some types of bullying and harassment.
“We want to have a space, a platform that is comfortable for everyone,” she said. “We give everyone access to moderation tools so they can design their own experiences.”