Parler's Parent Company Lays Off Majority of Its Staff (theverge.com) 108
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Parlement Technologies, the parent company of "censorship-free" social media platform Parler, has laid off a majority of its staff and most of its chief executives over the last few weeks. The sudden purge of staff has thrown the future of Parler, one of the first conservative alternatives to mainstream platforms, into question. Parlement Technologies began laying off workers in late November, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. These layoffs continued through at least the end of December, when around 75 percent of staffers were let go in total, leaving approximately 20 employees left working at both Parler and the parent-company's cloud services venture. 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.
Parler was founded in 2018 at the height of former President Donald Trump's war against social media platforms over their alleged discrimination against conservative users. The platform marketed itself as a "free speech" alternative to more mainstream platforms like Facebook and Twitter, offering what it billed as anti-censorship moderation policies. The app surged in popularity throughout the 2020 presidential election cycle, registering more than 7,000 new users per minute at its peak that November. But following the deadly January 6th riot at the US Capitol, Apple and Google expelled the app from their app stores after criticism that it was used to plan and coordinate the attack. These bans prevented new users from downloading the app, effectively shutting down user growth. "It's not clear how many people are currently employed to work on the Parler social media platform or where it's headed from here," adds The Verge. "At the time of publication, the company has just one open job left on its website: to manage its data center facilities in Los Angeles."
Parler was founded in 2018 at the height of former President Donald Trump's war against social media platforms over their alleged discrimination against conservative users. The platform marketed itself as a "free speech" alternative to more mainstream platforms like Facebook and Twitter, offering what it billed as anti-censorship moderation policies. The app surged in popularity throughout the 2020 presidential election cycle, registering more than 7,000 new users per minute at its peak that November. But following the deadly January 6th riot at the US Capitol, Apple and Google expelled the app from their app stores after criticism that it was used to plan and coordinate the attack. These bans prevented new users from downloading the app, effectively shutting down user growth. "It's not clear how many people are currently employed to work on the Parler social media platform or where it's headed from here," adds The Verge. "At the time of publication, the company has just one open job left on its website: to manage its data center facilities in Los Angeles."
Thats surprising.. (Score:5, Funny)
I would have thought that a website serving Trump supporters could have leveraged all those dumb idiots through adverts.
Re: Thats surprising.. (Score:5, Insightful)
They are just moving on to a new grift
Re:Thats surprising.. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have thought that a website serving Trump supporters could have leveraged all those dumb idiots through adverts.
All of the alternative social media sites (Parler, Trump's Truth Social, etc.) suffer from the same two fundamental flaws:
They are all based on the lie that conservatives are being banned from other social media sites simply because of their conservative opinions. They aren't. They are being kicked out for being liars who are only there to cause trouble. And the established social media sites are tired of dealing with their bullshit. The established social media sites already suck and don't need the additional headache of Pro-Trump bullshit.
There are no liberals to pwn on Parler. Other than the most rabid right wing nutjobs, nobody gives half a fuck about Hunter Biden's laptop. Creating your own "conservative friendly" social media site simply results in an echo chamber where everyone is endlessly regurgitating the same stupid shit. They don't care about discussing things or "free speech". They want to rant about how they are being oppressed by the Evil Liberals. There's no fun in doing that on a site where everyone else is saying the same exact thing.
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It's a lot like Conservopedia, the "alternative" to wikipedia where they can promote creationism (only a specific Christian version), young earth science, and whatever they "feel" is truthy. Mostly so that their kids don't head to the satanic liberal wikipedia when they do their homework. Sites like those really embarrass a lot of conservatives who aren't in the looney fringe.
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The funniest part of this comment is that you are apparently unaware that half of the country has been reading Twitter's internal communications for the last few months.
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Well not exactly. They've been reading summaries and interpretations of Twitter communications. Probably a few hundred have read the actual ones
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I would have thought that a website serving Trump supporters could have leveraged all those dumb idiots through adverts.
All of the alternative social media sites (Parler, Trump's Truth Social, etc.) suffer from the same two fundamental flaws:
They are all based on the lie that conservatives are being banned from other social media sites simply because of their conservative opinions. They aren't. They are being kicked out for being liars who are only there to cause trouble. And the established social media sites are tired of dealing with their bullshit. The established social media sites already suck and don't need the additional headache of Pro-Trump bullshit.
There are no liberals to pwn on Parler. Other than the most rabid right wing nutjobs, nobody gives half a fuck about Hunter Biden's laptop. Creating your own "conservative friendly" social media site simply results in an echo chamber where everyone is endlessly regurgitating the same stupid shit. They don't care about discussing things or "free speech". They want to rant about how they are being oppressed by the Evil Liberals. There's no fun in doing that on a site where everyone else is saying the same exact thing.
The problem isn't that they're being kicked off other sites, it's that other users can contradict them with nasty facts. So they started their own echo chambers... Wait, no-one is visiting these echo chambers so how can they own the libs? Musk has tried turning twitter into one of these echo chambers and is bleeding users. Turns out that you can't force people to agree with you silently.
Re:Thats surprising.. (Score:5, Informative)
A violent mob attacked the capitol in attempt to subvert democracy. That's a very serious issue.
Dozens of law enforcement were injured both physically and mentally with a few dying due to the event.
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Only one person died due to the riots and it was a rioter shot by a DC policeman.
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I'm told over and over again that carjackers, robbery suspects who have firearms but are running away after a crime, etc. are not eligible to be shot and that it's a huge outrage when it happens...where's the same outrage here when unarmed Ashli Babbit was executed/murdered?
Well if you're going to open that door, here's the opposite argument: whenever we hear that random people stopped on the street for no reason other than being non-white in the presence of a racist police officer gets shot in the back, we always hear "they should have just complied" with orders from the police officer. Why couldn't Ms. Babbit "just comply" and not continue trying to break into the office of the Speaker of the House?
She was trespassing inside the US Capitol during a violent insurrection. S
Re: Thats surprising.. (Score:1)
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If she had only complied with the orders of the police.
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You mean only one person was killed during the insurrection attempt. A few participants died (but weren't killed) during it, an officer that was assaulted died later, and a few officers sadly took their own lives because of the event.
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Ah, but it was an UNSUCCESSFUL attempt, as you might have noticed. So yes, by definition, it was not enough to ACTUALLY subvert democracy, it was merely a failed attempt.
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Yes but people seem to think there was any actual chance for success. With you know, flag poles and bear spray.
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I recall seeing many posts on many social media sites reminding protesters not to bring guns into the nation's capital. I don't know how anyone thought they had a chance of success with sticks and stones. But hey keep watching the main stream media, i'm sure they will tell you more falsehoods to believe!
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I recall seeing many posts on many social media sites reminding protesters not to bring guns into the nation's capital. I don't know how anyone thought they had a chance of success with sticks and stones. But hey keep watching the main stream media, i'm sure they will tell you more falsehoods to believe!
Ahem.
The Magnetometers at the Rally at the Ellipse weren't going-off on "Sticks and Stones".
GTFO, Liar.
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A failed bank robbery by incompetent criminals is still a crime.
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Absolutely! All of the people involved in the attack of Jan 6 are traitors. I consider the people who organized and promoted the action to be especially traitorous.
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All it takes is for people to sit back and let it happen.
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All this pearl-clutching is ridiculous. It's difficult to take the events of Jan. 6th seriously when Capitol police opened the door for protesters and then only shot one of the interlopers. Those "insurrectionists" were morons who would have fled in fear with a stern warning followed by a hail of gunfire. Capitol security should have barred the door and killed anyone who forced entry. Those protesters who entered should be dead right now. Instead these fools are sitting in the Fed wasting our tax dollars.
Stop lying.
I watched several channels in real time not to mention countless video clips since that day, and not once did I see a door-opened by any member of the Capitol Security force.
Prove me wrong, or STFU.
Re: Thats surprising.. (Score:1)
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I think Trump wanted to go and observe but his security detail told him no and had to physically redirect him to the limo. And to all those Trumpers who claim "don't believe it, the hearings were all lies!" I guess they really do want to push the "he was a coward" excuse instead?
The snag is that I think most conservatives just do not like Trump in any way, except for a tiny handful of true believers. But they stick with Trump because he keeps them in their jobs; it's easy to get reelected by invoking the
Re:Thats surprising.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Only ONE person died that day
So, deadly then?
This is a protest that got out of control and a few of the folks broke in (some were let in by guards).
Snork. A few folks? A FEW FOLKS? Try 1200.
and did wrong
That's not the word I'd use. My dog chewing up a shoe would be "wrong". Stealing shit, breaking shit, tracking literal shit, taking over the halls of congress? Causing about $1.5M in damages? I guess through rosy-red-conservative glasses, you could call that "wrong".
It was a bad day, but let's not blow it out of proportion of what it was.
Agreed, but minimizing it to "a few people [doing] wrong" is equally as insane.
Re:Thats surprising.. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a mob that did battle with police for *hours* The number of injured police was over a hundred. The intent of the mob was to murder the vice president of the United States of America. An attempted murder of the US President of Vice President isn't a protest that got out of hand. The difference between aggravated assault and murder is often aim.
That the secret service and the capital police were able to defend the building with only one protester shot dead is a tribute to how well they did their job. If I had been a cop at that scene, there would have been many more insurrectionist bodies.
Calling the (incompetent but violent) insurrection a protest that got out of control is nothing but a fairy tale.
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There are several deaths that can be directly attributed to the attack. Sure, Officer Sicknick died the following day,1 but we all know WHY he died, right? The coroner drew a direct link between the events of the 6th and that death. If you are trying to claim that "the only person who died because of Jan 6 insurrection attempt was this one lady" then you are just plain wrong, and/or trying to mislead people.
This wasn't a case of the police using too much force or something, the rioters caused the violence,
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He died of a stroke. Any medical examiner attributing that to any specific cause of day to day life should be summarily fired and stripped of his medical license.
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He died of a stroke. Any medical examiner attributing that to any specific cause of day to day life should be summarily fired and stripped of his medical license.
Seriously?
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Yes seriously. The only real direct attribution of strokes to a given event that can be made involves certain drugs. And even then it's not entirely certain. Stress CAN contribute to a stroke, but only over the long term.
Re:Thats surprising.. (Score:5, Informative)
So what you're saying is someone died, making it deadly. And she wasn't trying to crawl in a window to the Capitol, she was trying to crawl through a window into the office suite of the Speaker of the House, where congressional members were hiding from violent insurrectionists looking to harm them, and had Capitol Police defending the door; and defend they did.
And from widely available video we have people with knives, stun guns, blunt weapons, bear spray, flagpoles with spears on the end, etc. making them armed.
And an insurrection is defined as "a violent uprising against an authority or government" which seems to fit as a pretty accurate description of a mob of hundreds of people riled up by political speeches to go to the seat of government and cause a bunch of chaos in order to disrupt the operation of government - specifically the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to another.
So therefore, calling it a 'deadly armed insurrection' is entirely accurate, and you're the liar when you deny such easily observable reality.
What body count do you need before calling something deadly? Why are you trying so hard to downplay a violent attempt to overthrow our democratically elected government?
This is a protest that got out of control and a few of the folks broke in (some were let in by guards)...and did wrong.
Congratulations on again ignoring easily observable reality. There is widely available evidence and sworn testimony of conspiracy reaching back before the election even took place. It was absolutely not a protest that got out of control - that's the bullshit that Fox Propaganda tried to sell, and apparently you're buying.
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Two people died, Babbit was shot to death and then another woman was beaten to death in the tunnel by a cop.
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Yeah, but why do they keep promoting this lie?
Only ONE person died that day...it was an unarmed lady trying to crawl into a capitol window that was shot dead by a capitol policeman...
They keep calling it a deadly day and an "armed" insurrection like 100's of folks lost their lives and there was gunfire throughout the incident.
C'mon folks...this is the US where we have more guns that people...if it was to be a real armed or real deadly insurrection, it would have been a bloodbath, we are readily capable of it.
This is a protest that got out of control and a few of the folks broke in (some were let in by guards)...and did wrong.
It was a bad day, but let's not blow it out of proportion of what it was.
If it was what the media tries to promote it as...it would have been a real blood bath with real gun fire.
Thankfully, it was not.
Nice revisionist history attempt.
STFU and GTFO.
Thank you.
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I would have thought that a website serving Trump supporters could have leveraged all those dumb idiots through adverts.
Adverts for what? Trump supporters are low-IQ, low-income idiots. What legitimate business wants to spend money advertising to that audience? Check out the Fox News channel some time. 90% of the advertising is scams aimed at stupid people.
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Yep...they're doing something right.
Still #1, aren't they?
I mean hell, they are even winning the fscking late night talkshow spot with Gutfeld aren't they?
I guess no matter their faults....people still buy what they are saying over the rest of the left to far left outlets are promoting.
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over the rest of the left to far left outlets
What "left to far left" outlets are you talking about? Buddy, you have no idea where the left actually is...
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Well, pretty much all of the other networks, ABC, CBS, NBC and now even CNN are medium left...
CNN was much farther left until recently when they started canning some of the worst of the worst like Stelter, etc.
MSNBC and TYT....are VERY extreme left.
And of course I'm talking US concepts of left and right, not Europe or other places in the world, those don't matter.
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HaHaHa!
You think MSNBC and TYT are "VERY extreme left"?!! In what twisted world?
MSNBC is pro-corporate media that pretends to pander to the left.
TYT are centrists that pretend to be progressives.
Get some perspective, kid.
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The problem is that you right-wing nuts are so far gone that you think Ronald Regan's policies are "VERY extreme left".
It's a good thing you kooks are in a rapidly shrinking minority.
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Yep...they're doing something right.
For sure - they tell people what they want to hear. What keeps them angry and tuned in. Keeps a lot of people viewing.
They're often not truthful or balanced in their coverage, but they sure are popular!
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I guess no matter their faults....people still buy what they are saying over the rest of the left to far left outlets are promoting.
Because who isn't outraged a bag of candy isn't sexy enough [yahoo.com]?
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Sounds like Trump, where the only thing that even remotely matters who him is "ratings". His worst insult to others is "over rated" (ie, their ratings should be lower). Popularity is meaningless, and does not determine what is good or bad or right or wrong. The most popular restaurant in the world is McDonald's but that's not where people go for quality food.
On that end, some of the CNN advertisemens seem oriented to stupid people also. Stupid people apparently hang on to their favorite news media, so i
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MSNBC and TYT....very far left.
Until recently CNN was leaning fairly far left/progressive.
I think they're back to medium left at this point.
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So is McDonalds, doesn't mean its not complete garbage
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You mean Patriot Pills!
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Check out the Fox News channel some time. 90% of the advertising is scams aimed at stupid people.
Like ads from the Mike Lindell guy -- why would people want *his* pillow? :-)
And why does he have so many that he can sell them off?
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They can leverage way more of them on the mainstream social media sites. They allow you to target users by interest. And, despite the shrill cries and persecution complex, they are all still on the mainstream social media sites.
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I would have thought that a website serving Trump supporters could have leveraged all those dumb idiots through adverts.
There's some redundancy in that sentence, but I can't quite figure out the right grouping ... :-)
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Not sure that companies will want to advertise in a network known to have alot of toxic people.
That may backfire on them in a big way........
No room at the table (Score:1)
I can't see how Parler survives, anyone that would have been interested in it either went to Truth, or back to Twitter. Or even to Mastodon... three choices of Twitter-style social media seems to be about what the market can really support, there's only so much time in a day to check social media platforms.
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Parler absolutely lost it's shot when Truth launched. They were probably expecting/hoping Trump would just Parler to get a solid easy foothold but I am guessing they now realized Trump cannot do any type of business deal without some sort of scam baked in and that's easier to do with a new platform than buying one that has what seems to be an actual business model. Parler won't make it to the summer and no one will want to bail them out.
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There's no way anyone was going to trust Parler after they got shut down so easily by AWS. No redundancy = no bueno.
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Thing is AWS told them exactly what they needed to do to do to get back in their platform and it's not like they didn't recover (after an embrassingly long time) and get rehosted and are still up today. You're buying the userbase and a kick start to your platform. I think it would have made sense with the pennies on the dollar price Trump could have paid.
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They wont be up that much longer if the layoffs are any indication. Trump possibly could have rescued them. But it did indeed take them an embarrassingly long time to get rehosted. That didn't exactly inspire confidence.
Truth Social will likely meet the same fate eventually.
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Great point (Score:1)
Setting up a social media platform that right from the start tells the majority of the population "We don't want you here!" seems like a fool's errand to me.
I totally agree, I don't see how anything like that can really survive.
I think Truth only gets away with it for the moment because Trump is on there but I don't know that Truth has great long term prospects either.
It seems like in the end only platforms that try to remain as open as possible will do well.
Re:Great point (Score:5, Informative)
Truth was only ever another grift for the alleged former president. The goal was get investors to essentially pay him off for use of his name. That's what the spac deal was about, except that it appears to have run up against U.S. law.
The NFTs he was hawking were similar in that respect, the money goes to some company that pays that idiot for his name. That way the former alleged president is guaranteed a check even if no one buys them. All of his grifts have the common feel of scam.
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Didn't you just claim that Twitter would be profitable later this year? Now you want us to believe that you're an expert on the social media market?
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Finally a useful comment on the subject! Yet you are scored down-word.... what has become of Slashdot. Noted that your user number is down there close to mine..
No one to argue with! (Score:5, Insightful)
Living in a complete echo chamber means there aren't any Libs on Parler to own. They don't actually care about any ideas, they just want the conflict.
Re:No one to argue with! (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't actually care about any ideas, they just want the conflict.
I don't think I've seen a better summation of Conservatives, other than "I got mine, now fuck off"
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> Living in a complete echo chamber means there aren't any Libs on Parler to own. They don't actually care about any ideas, they just want the conflict.
You haven't even heard about Truth Social, have you?
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Or they get bored. The excitement over "Trump pwned those librals who don't now what covfefe means!" can't be sustained forever. Eventually they figure out that maybe Trump is just another guy who tweets on the toilet and isn't really playing 4 dimensional chess, and it's starting to dawn that the kraken is never going to be unleashed.
Too many social media platforms.... (Score:3, Interesting)
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pakman, you here?
knew it.
Like Alderan, except the exact opposite? (Score:3)
Kanye West (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember when the guys whispering in Kanye's ear tried to get him to buy Parler about 2 months ago? He even agreed to it, then backed out.
Presumably his accountant or someone clued him in, "Hey, these guys are taking advantage of you. They're selling you a dud."
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Then again, who still gives about 2 fucks about this has-been?
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I always thought he was overrated, even at his peak, and I'm someone who enjoys quite a bit of rap.
I just think it's amusing to see the right-wingers sticking wires in his brain and trying to scam him out of money. (A lot of Republican voters could learn from this.) It also seems to be a facet of the strategy to trot out braindamaged black entertainers, as a desperate grab at black mindshare. Herschel Walker vibes. "Look, we have negroes too!"
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And we're not racist, we fleece them just exactly the same.
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Presumably his accountant or someone clued him in, "Hey, these guys are taking advantage of you. They're selling you a dud."
I highly doubt Kanye is of a sane enough mind to listen to an accountant. If he had he probably wouldn't have burnt billions of dollars worth of bridges with his corporate sponsors.
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He lost his sponsors because he can't stop talking about Jews. Backing out of the Parler deal doesn't have any bearing on that compulsion, he can keep right on with it.
"Insanity" isn't monolithic. Treating it that way is an intellectual cop-out. You need to examine the nature of the insanity to tease out which particular situations it will affect, and how.
Still no negative Twitter headlines on Slashdot (Score:3)
Elon Musk buys Twitter and indiscriminately lays off thousands of employees then begs critical individuals to come back and help. No Slashdot coverage.
Elon Musk follows Slashdot on Twitter [cnet.com] and sometimes retweets and comments on its Tweets raising Slashdot's profile on Twitter and driving some amount of traffic to the site.
In parallel to this pattern, there were over 40 articles containing "FTX" in the subject over the past two months.
Re:Still no negative Twitter headlines on Slashdot (Score:5, Informative)
I dunno what to say, maybe check in on /. more? They have an absolute boner for Elon:
elon musk twitter site:slashdot.org [google.com]
In my opinion he should have just bought Slashdot, saved $43.9B and still gotten the sycophantic echo chamber he desires.
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Dicedot was deliberately turned to shit by its owners who are obviously agenda-driven.
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I dunno what to say, maybe check in on /. more? They have an absolute boner for Elon:
elon musk twitter site:slashdot.org [google.com]
In my opinion he should have just bought Slashdot, saved $43.9B and still gotten the sycophantic echo chamber he desires.
Really? Filter for Oct 27th (when Musk purchased it) and look again [google.com].
A single article about his new "Twitter Blue" (which generated weeks of mainstream media coverage), a little bit about Mastodon, and an article about Musk's leaks to Matt Taibbi. I'm sure there's other stuff (/. search sucks) but not much.
Meanwhile, Musk was laying off tons of Twitter employees, firing employees if they didn't agree to brutal working conditions, screwing around like crazy with verification, holding votes on whether to allow
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I dunno what to say, maybe check in on /. more? They have an absolute boner for Elon:
elon musk twitter site:slashdot.org [google.com]
In my opinion he should have just bought Slashdot, saved $43.9B and still gotten the sycophantic echo chamber he desires.
Oh, and Twitter was temporarily evicted from its Singapore offices for not paying rent [gizmodo.com]. Another story one would typically expect to find on /., but I'm sure it won't make the front page.
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Because this is par for the course, Elon is batshit insane, him doing batshit insane shit isn't newsworthy. It's just another business day.
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And yet there was a time when Slashdot could do that all on their own! Ever heard of the "Slashdot effect?"
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Slashdot had a ton of Elon Musk stories, were you on vacation?
Nobody wants t o advertise on a biased platform? (Score:2)
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There ya go again exaggerating the situation - the population boils down to roughly 30% hard right, 30% hard left, and the rest are perhaps the only sane ones.
Re:Nobody wants t o advertise on a biased platform (Score:4, Insightful)
Truth likely got very low advertising impressions and low rates due to many brands not wanting to be associated with it's toxicity rather than the lack of impression opportunities. (i.e. they couldn't sell as many ads as they had potential to run)
Excellent (Score:2)
Hopefully, Twitter and Facebook will be next.
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