Social networking service Parler‘s parent company has reportedly laid off most of its employees, raising doubts over how far the ‘free speech’ centered social media platform would go.
What Happened: Parlement Technologies, the parent company of Parler, has laid off 75% of its staff and most of its chief executives, reported The Verge.
The mass layoffs have raised doubts about Parler's future, which initially positioned itself as a “free speech” alternative to Meta Platform Inc.‘s META Facebook and Elon Musk-led Twitter.
Parler’s present situation is significantly different from last October, when rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, expressed his intent to purchase the platform.
Ye had famously extended an invitation to former U.S. President Donald Trump — who has his own conservative-centric social media platform Truth Social — to join Parler.
The news at the time led to a slump in the shares of Digital World Acquisition Corp DWAC, the SPAC partner of Truth Social parent company Trump Media & Technology Group.
Parler terminated its sale to Ye — who has struck several controversies lately due to his antisemitic remarks — last month, saying it was a mutual decision.
While Parler received significant attention from Trump’s supporters, the former president never created an account on the platform. While Ye extended an invitation to Trump asking him to join Parler, the latter called him a “seriously troubled man.”
During the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Parler registered at least 7,000 new users per minute, but after the Capitol Riot, Apple and Google banned the platform from their respective app stores, the report noted. Four months after getting expelled, Parler returned to the App Store.
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