Parler, the right-wing social internet known for welcoming waves of conservative figures booted off other platforms in the wake of the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, is going dark after being acquired by digital media firm Starboard.
The buyer, founded in 2018 as Olympic Media, plans to revive Parler after a retooling and expand it into other business areas.
No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business anymore, Starboard said in a statement.
ParlerSTRF/STAR MAX/IPx
Parlers recent pivot toward cloud and IT infrastructure will enable it to be a key part of its new parents effort to provide services to what it calls unsupported online communities.
The goal, in the words of the statement, will be to leverage Parler, the worlds pioneering uncancelable free speech platform, to help create a home for other, like-minded digital players away from the ad-hoc regulatory hand of platforms that hate them.
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Similar to upstarts like Gettr and Gab, Parler started to gain a small following during the presidency of Donald Trump, when tensions grew about the role played by Big Tech and individual companies in terms of policing online content.
Parler gained particular notoriety during the last weeks of Trumps administration and in the early months of 2021 because of the decision by Twitter and other social media and tech companies to ban Trump and a number of far-right hate groups and individuals.
With the influx of new users, many of whom had been involved in the attacks on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, Parler soon came under fire from tech providers like Amazon Web Services.
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Financial terms of the latest acquisition were not disclosed, but Starboard said it expects the deal to be accretive to its financials by the end of June.
