Parler CEO John Matze says he was fired by board
The board of Parler, a social media platform backed by Republican Party donor Rebekah Mercer and favored by U.S conservatives, has fired its CEO John Matze, he said on Wednesday.
Matze confirmed the move to Reuters, after it was originally reported by Fox News, and said that he had not been given a settlement.
"On January 29, 2021, the Parler board controlled by Rebekah Mercer decided to immediately terminate my position as CEO of Parler. I did not participate in this decision," Matze said in a memo sent to Parler staff.
"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 told Reuters that Parler now has an "executive committee" consisting of Matthew Richardson and Mark Meckler.
Mercer, Richardson, Meckler and Parler did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Parler remains largely offline after being dropped by Seattle-based Amazon's cloud-hosting division and the app stores of Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google following the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol.
The companies cited Parler's record of policing violent content, after far-right groups spread violent rhetoric on the platform ahead of the unrest in Washington.
CyberNews reported that activists tried to save as much information posted on the social network as possible. The task was completed successfully as researches exploited security flaws in the platform.
Parler, which was founded in 2018 and has claimed it has over 12 million users, has styled itself as a "free speech-driven" space.
The app has largely attracted U.S. conservatives who disagree with rules around content on social media sites like Facebook Inc and Twitter Inc.
Matze told Reuters on Jan. 13 that Parler may be offline for good, but later pledged it would return stronger.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru, Elizabeth Culliford in New York and Katie Paul in Palo Alto; Editing by Chris Reese, Cynthia Osterman and Sam Holmes). Information about the Parler data breach added by CyberNews.