(Reuters) – Parler, a popular social media service among right-wing US users that virtually disappeared after the U.S. Capitol uprising, relaunched on Monday and said its new platform was based on ” independent and sustainable technology “.
In a statement announcing the relaunch, Parler also said he had appointed Mark Meckler as interim chief executive to replace John Matze, who was fired by the board this month.
Parler was overshadowed after being cut short by major service providers who accused the application of failing to control violent content related to the Jan. 6 deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-U.S. President, Donald Trump.
Despite the relaunch, the website was not yet open to many users and the app was not available for download in Apple and Google-owned mobile stores owned by Alphabet, which had previously banned the app.
While several users competed with Twitter to complain that they could not access the service, some others said they could access their existing account.
Parler, who claimed it once had more than 20 million users, said it would reconnect its current users in the first week and be open to new users the following week.
Founded in 2018, the app has been designed as an “expression-free” space and has largely attracted American conservatives who disagree with the rules on the content of other social media sites. .
Last month, Amazon.com suspended Parler from its web hosting service, effectively removing the site offline. Parler said Monday that its new technology was reducing its reliance on “so-called Big Tech” for its operations.
Parler appears to be using CloudRoute LLC as its new host and replaced Amazon with the open source software platform Ceph here to the anonymous computer programmer “Crash override” who goes with Twitter manager @donk_enby.
The programmer, who became famous here for cataloging almost all of Parler’s user posts since the day of the Capitol riot, tweeted Monday that user accounts were still on the new platform, but have deleted posts, images and videos.
Parler and CloudRoute did not respond immediately to requests for comment.
“Parler is led by an experienced team and is here to stay,” said Meckler, who had co-founded the Tea Party Patriots, a group that emerged in 2009 within the Tea Party’s fiscally conservative movement and helped choose dozens of Republicans.
It is also backed by hedge fund investor Robert Mercer, his daughter Rebekah Mercer and conservative commentator Dan Bongino.
Reports by Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru and Supantha Mukherjee in Stockholm; Edited by Howard Goller