Conservative social media app Parler fires CEO

San Francisco: Conservative social media app Parler that was forced to go offline in the wake of encouraging violence during the Capitol chaos in the US, has fired its CEO and co-founder John Matze.

According to Fox News, Matze has been fired by his company’s own board of directors.

Matze had earlier told Fox News that all the company’s vendors e and even its lawyers e had abandoned him.

“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 wrote in a memo obtained by Fox News and reported late on Wednesday.

His LinkedIn page shows an employment end date of January 2021.

“I understand that those who now control the company have made some communications to employees and other third parties that have unfortunately created confusion and prompted me to make this public statement.”

Matze said that has been met with “constant resistance” to his original vision for the social media platform following Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) decision to shut Parler down.

Parler has sued Amazon for terminating its web hosting services.

Amazon had said it was “troubled” by repeated policy violations by Parler and it “cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others.”

Google and Apple removed Parler from their respective app stores after they found that Parler did not take stronger action to remove posts that sought “to incite ongoing violence” in the US.

Parler is touted as a free-speech alternative, allowing posts that include conspiracy theories, threats and hate speech, among other things, to remain on the platform.