Parler social media app and parent company Parlement Technologies fired 75% of its workforce, leaving only 20 employees, according to a report by The Verge. The report said Parler owner and CEO George Farmer fired its chief technology officer, operations officer, and marketing officers as well as several company executives too.
The report said the social media company retrenched most of its workers between November and December 2022, notably after the breakdown of acquisition talks with rapper and billionaire entrepreneur Kanye West, now known as Ye. Kanye and Parle revealed an acquisition deal was in progress on October 17, 2022.
“These layoffs continued through at least the end of December when around 75% of staffers were let go in total, leaving approximately 20 employees left working at both Parler and the parent company’s cloud services venture,” the report said. “A majority of the company’s executives, including its chief technology, operations, and marketing officers, have also been laid off, according to a source familiar with the matter.”
Kanye moved to acquire Parler after his antisemitic rants got him banned from Instagram and Twitter, just as the January 6 insurrection got former President Donald Trump removed from major social media platforms, forcing him to establish Truth Social. Analysts said Parler withdrew from the deal after Kanye on December 1 disclosed that he loved Hitler and would deal with Jews.
A far-right social media platform, Parler was banned by Amazon Web Services in 2021 after the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, and both Google and Apple removed the app from their stores. But in a #OnThisDay post on Tuesday, the company stated that Parler is now rebuilt and much better than ever after having its own cloud hosting services.
“#OnThisDay two years ago, Parler was de-platformed by Amazon Web Services,” the company claimed. “After being #1 in the IOS store the day before, Google and Apple followed and removed the Parler app from their app stores. Two years later, on our own cloud servers and back on the Apple and Google Play stores, #Parler has been rebuilt and better than ever.”
However, investigations revealed that since Parler was de-platformed by AWS, Google, and Apple stores for its role in the insurrection, Google and Apple accepted it back after it modified its content moderation protocols. While Parler boasts of 16.5 million registered users, its monthly visits declined from 2.3 million in September to 1.2 million in November 2022, but the company disclosed that it secured $16 million in funding to expand its services into an “uncancellable economy.”
