Parler is back, baby.After a year-long hiatus from the internet, conservative social media sites Returned to the Internetthis time its new owners promise it won’t become the radical right-wing hellhole it was when it left it.
Parler has been offline since last April when it was acquired by a media conglomerate and subsequently closure Hopefully it can be transformed and revived. The site had been struggling before the acquisition.The app returned to the Apple App Store this week as part of a new version and is expected to return to Google Play soon, new owners say Tell Wired.
Parler’s new owners are former Parler executives Elise Pierotti and Ryan Rhodes, who will serve as the site’s new CEO. According to Wired, Pierotti and Rhodes are brother and sister.The other new owner of the site is a man named Jaco Booyens. CNBC reports is an “anti-sex trafficking activist.”
Parler has certainly seen its ups and downs.Originally launched in 2018 as a “free speech” app, it quickly became known as The conservative version of Twitter.After an initial surge in popularity during the final years of the Trump administration, the app was essentially Kicked off the internet during the brief period following the January 6 riots. Critics blame the app for causing a surge in right-wing radicalism linked to violent riots. Although there is good evidence that Parler does play a role, later research has shown that other social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitteralso played an important role.
After J6’s collapse, the site survived for another two years or so, but with declining financial returns. 2022 Kanye West I almost bought the platform but deal messed up Ye took his talents elsewhere. Then, last April, a media conglomerate called Starboard acquired Parler and shut it down the same day.Starboard says Plans to close the site until it can reorganize Enter a new platform. The website was subsequently taken offline and has ceased to exist.
Parler’s new owners told Wired they don’t want the site to devolve into a cesspool of violent extremism again and want to create a space more suitable for discussion of all kinds. “The original idea behind Parler was that people were attracted to it as a free speech platform, which led to success,” Rhodes Tell Wired. “There are a lot of things that don’t allow it to be what it could be. Our goal is to make Parler a truly open platform where everyone, right and left, can have a voice.”
Gizmodo reached out to Parler for more details about its revival, and we’ll update this story if we hear back.
You might say that it’s hard for Parler to corner the market on right-wing extremism now that Elon Musk’s relaunched version of Twitter (or, as Musk calls it, X) appears to have done just that. Since Musk acquired Twitter, renamed it and fired nearly all of its content moderators, the site has become a veritable free-for-all, where right-wing conspiracy theories and hateful content can spread freely. Since Twitter looks a lot like the original version of Parler, it would be fitting if Parler became a lot like the original version of Twitter.