Remember this, folks, it's all about the grift. Parler was never about "free speech," it's about gathering whiney wingnuts into one place so John Matze can SELL them as a concentrated group of customers to investors. Matze led a website focused on Trump supporters and told them his website was a safe space for anti-Semitism, rage, and racism. The "free speech" they celebrate was hate speech which fomented a violent physical attack on our democracy. And Trumpists flocked to it. Of COURSE Maria Bartiromo wants to hand him a hot toddy and soothe his loss... of "business success." Please.
Update: Monday is another bad day for Parler and its Nazi sympathizers:
From the January 10 "Sunday Morning Futures" on Fox Business:
Before its removal Parler searches were number one in Apple’s app store with 1 and a half million downloads on Saturday alone. Joining me right now on the exclusive interview with reaction is the CEO of Parler, John Matze, good to have you this morning. Thank you very much for being here. What is your reaction and the impact to this squashing of Parler?
JOHN MATZE, CEO, PARLER: Well, thank you for having me on. Well, it’s devastating, it’s what it is. It’s an assault on everybody. They all work together to make sure at the same time we would lose access to not only our apps but they are actually shutting all of our servers off tonight, off the internet. They made an attempt to not only kill the app, but the actually destroy the entire company and it’s not just these 3 companies, every vendor from — from text message services to e-mail providers to our lawyers, all ditched us too on the same day and they are trying to falsely claim that we were somehow responsible for the events that occurred on the sixth.
BARTIROMO: This is extraordinary that you see the coordinated effort on the same day that the president is banned on Twitter. You’ve got Google and Instagram removing Parler and now last night late Apple removes Parler as well. What are you going to do? Can this put you out of business?
MATZE: It would put anybody out of business. If they did this to any app, any company, it would completely destroy them. We will try our best to get back online as quickly as possible because every vendor we talked to say they won’t work with us because if Apple doesn’t approve or Google doesn’t approve, they won’t. They have given us no legitimate remedy. They tried to ask us for, you know, to cooperate with them on a few things. We’ve tried to give them everything that they wanted, you know, without sacrificing our principles and there were remedies and they just don’t care. They want to get rid of us.
BARTIROMO: What is the reason that they are saying they want you out? I know the company has been incredibly successful as many people have called out social media for censorship, Twitter would not run the Hunter Biden story during an election and locked down New York Post from Twitter. Google has created algorithms potentially that will also censor information and there’s been attacks on Parler because of their open free speech approach, what’s the reason for shutting you down?
MATZE: They claim that we somehow were responsible for the — what they call the insurrection on the sixth which we never allowed violence, we never allowed any of this stuff on the platform and we don’t even have a way to coordinate events on the platform. They kind of want to make us responsible. It’s not. We’ve grown so much. We were number 1 in the app store the day we were removed for, quote, unquote violence, and the same day the horrible violence was trending on Twitter. It’s an obvious double standard. It’s obvious collusion and they are doing it, you know, to stifle free speech and competition in the marketplace and this could happen to literally anybody.
BARTIROMO: This is unbelievable. I know that as the lead-up to this President Trump was saying that these companies are way too powerful and he wanted to find a way to roll back section 230 which, of course, gives them immunity from any lawsuits. It protects them, their liability. All through that, you said we shouldn’t pull back section 230 and now we see how powerful they are, John.
MATZE: We changed our stance on 230 due to knowledge from our legal team, who actually just fired us too. I totally see the danger here. What they are doing and the amount of power is not just frightening, it’s actually extremely scary.
BARTIROMO: So you’re saying it’s not just Apple taking you off the app store, there’s also a movement to just shut down your servers, pretty much shut you down?
MATZE: Amazon is the largest cloud vendor in the world and they basically gave us — you have 24 hours to get all of your data and find new servers. Where are you going to find 300 to 500 servers in 24-hour window and how can you send data out to all of them? It’s an impossible feat. We will handle it as best we can. There’s just some things that are almost basically impossible.
BARTIROMO: Unbelievable. John Matze, we will be following the story, we will see you this upcoming week in mornings with Maria, I’m back on the chair on mornings with Maria on Fox Business, we will talk to you then. John Matze, we, of course, will.
