This week, the controversial social networking app Parler is back up and running.
Of course, most will remember the online networking site as a recent hotspot for conservatives to gather following the 2020 Presidential election and subsequent months through the storming of the United States Capitol.
Following the events at the Capitol, Parler was met with an intense level of scrutiny from tech giants like Apple, Google, and Amazon and was subsequently removed from each of those platforms.
The removal from these platforms effectively took Parler’s presence offline entirely.
However, this did not come without a fair amount of backlash and support from conservatives who decried that the tech giants were in effect censoring free speech.
Free speech is one of the main tenets of the platform as it is generally not moderated like other social networks.
Up until recently, it looked like Parler might not be able to survive or at least attempt to make a comeback after being blacklisted by these three major gatekeepers.
However, this past Monday the site Parler.com did return a live site with a login available. At the time of this writing, though, the site still seemed to be having issues loading.
Even getting the site up and running at all took weeks to set up and it appears there’s still likely to be a bit of slow progress in the coming weeks ahead for the young company.
Executives have not made any comments about the site’s return and this comes after the CEO was fired as well.
To even get to this point, Parler sought the help of several web-hosting firms and were rejected. They settled on SkySilk, who maintained they wanted to support free speech.
Parler also needed to dig into some other fairly controversial partners to reach this point.
The social networking site also enlisted the help of a Russian firm and also a Seattle company that have in the past been linked to the Russian government and neo-nazi sites, respectively.
For some, Parler’s reemergence is a victory for free speech and a push back against the monopoly that some of “Big Tech” has on the Internet.
For others, it is a desperate move by a company that is clinging to a need to stay relevant. Partnering with some less than squeaky clean partners could also prove to be a problem over time.
The real question will be whether the platform ever gains any traction again or if the return is more of an empty shell. 2021 should provide significant answers to these questions.
