Parler, a moderation-light social media platform that was forced offline last month by tech giants over how it policed its content, has fired its chief executive.
John Matze, the former CEO, said he was fired on Friday by the company’s board. He said the board is currently controlled by conservative political donor Rebekah Mercer.
“Over the past few months, I’ve met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech and my view of how the Parler site should be managed,” he said in a statement. “For example, I advocated for more product stability and what I believe is a more effective approach to content moderation.”
The immediate impact on Parler’s efforts to restore service to its roughly 15 million users isn’t clear, though a person familiar with the company said that Mr. Matze had been responsible for creating Parler’s original code.
Representatives for Parler and Ms. Mercer couldn’t be reached for comment.
In the months following the U.S. presidential election, Parler carved out a niche but rapidly growing place in social media by wooing conservatives disaffected by mainstream platforms’ efforts to label certain speech and ban users who they deemed to have violated their guidelines around hate speech, misinformation and false claims of victory by former President Donald Trump.
Parler’s rules forbid criminal activity and threats, but the platform left moderation up to community “jurors,” users who addressed content violations and were paid part-time.
Major tech platforms took issue with that approach in the wake of the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 by Trump supporters, alleging that Parler failed to adequately police the platform.
Some Parler users posted threats ahead of the deadly attack on the Capitol, and others uploaded photos and videos of themselves during the riot, according to researchers and screenshots of posts viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
Amid a pressure campaign by liberal activist group Sleeping Giants, Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google suspended new downloads of the app. Amazon Web Services then followed suit, forcing the platform offline on Jan. 11.
Mr. Matze initially said he hoped to bring the service back online within a few weeks, though Parler hasn’t publicly reported progress.
“Over the past few weeks, I have worked endless hours and fought constant battles to get the Parler site running, but at this point, the future of Parler is no longer in my hands,” Mr. Matze said.
Ms. Mercer, daughter of hedge-fund investor Robert Mercer, is among the company’s financial backers, the Journal reported in November. The Mercers have previously financed a number of conservative causes.
Ms. Mercer said in a post on the platform that she “started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech, as our founders intended.”
Write to Jeff Horwitz at [email protected] and Keach Hagey at [email protected]
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