Parler May Not Return Online | Eastern North Carolina Now

Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the LifeZette. The author of this post is David Kamioner.

    Parler was a decent little service. I was on it for a time. While it never had that much influence and did give voice to a fringe element, such is what comes with free speech. But the left only wants speech limited to their narrative. So Parler had to go. The events of January 6th gave the Left the opportunity to act on their authoritarian impulses. Another own goal by certain people on the starboard side of politics.

    FNC: "Social media platform Parler, which has gone dark after being cut off by major service providers that accused the app of failing to police violent content, may never get back online, said its CEO John Matze. As a procession of business vendors severed ties with the two-year-old site following the storming of the U.S. Capitol last week, Matze said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday that he does not know when or if it will return. 'It's hard to keep track of how many people are telling us that we can no longer do business with them,' said Matze. Amazon on Tuesday filed exhibits that showed it had warned Parler late last year about vile and threatening language on its site before cutting off the platform after the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Matze said Parler had also been booted from online payments service Stripe and from American Express and had lost its Scylla Enterprise database. Parler could not send SMS messages after being banned by Twilio and could not use Slack to contact its 'jury' of paid and volunteer users who make Parler content moderation decisions after being ditched by the workplace messaging app."

    Before that happened, AOC went after Parler. She smelled blood in the water. She was right in her tactical analysis.

    "I think it's sick," Matze said in response to AOC. "That's not what the Constitution said. That's not what the Constitution stands for, banning 10-plus million U.S. voters from the internet, barring people from free speech. When people do things like that, it shows that they don't understand the meaning of the Constitution or this country and what it stands for."

    To pile on, the editorial board of The Washington Post came out in support of shutting down Parler. The irony escaped them.

    They said, "Parler deserved to be taken down. We still need new rules for the Internet." The paper described Parler as a "fringe, laissez-faire social media site...Mr. Trump and his followers say they are victims of anti-conservative discrimination. Their complaints are unconvincing. It is legitimate for corporate actors to scrub their sites of speech with the potential to cause harm, such as the explicit plotting that preceded last week's armed insurrection at the Capitol."

    The paper called for further Internet "regulation" in order to "ensure safety." Wonder what Amazon and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos thinks about that?

    "If we want rules of the road for the Twitters and Parlers of the Web — rules about inciting violence, for example — they should be set by our elected representatives, not unelected CEOs," the Post insisted. "And if we want those rules to be enforced fairly, without targeting speech that is merely unpopular, then we should insist that companies put into place systems for transparency, notice and appeal for their decisions." And what if those elected officials turn against the Post? Then the paper will be singing a different tune.