Amid several different accounts of the situation, Parler CEO John Matze announced his own termination as the social media company’s CEO. Matze stated that it was a decision of Parler’s board and that he was not a part of the discussion.
Matze released a statement explaining the situation, “I understand that those who now control the company have made some communications to employees and other third parties that have unfortunately created confusion and prompted me to make this public statement.”
“Over the past few months, I’ve met constant resistance to my product vision, my strong belief in free speech, and my view of how the Parler site should be managed. For example, I advocated for more product stability and what I believe is a more effective approach to content moderation.”
Matze is planning to take a few weeks off, “After that, I’ll be looking for new opportunities where my technical acumen, vision, and the causes I am passionate about will be required and respected.”
Matze’s version of events was disputed by conservative commentator Dan Bongino, who happens to be a Parler investor.
“Let me be crystal clear on this. He [Matze] makes two points, that ‘oh I was a big advocate for free speech it was my vision’ and “I was a big advocate for product stability.’ That is not true. That is not true. That is false,” Bongino said.
Bongino claimed that the reason for his termination was because Matze’s vision for Parler was different from the vision Bongino and the board had. Bongino said, “We needed to get up and fight back some terrible decisions were made in the past that led to this, that led us to getting put down by Amazon and others. It was us, me and the two other owners, that were constantly on the side of ‘this site was going to be a free speech platform’ or it was going to be nothing.”
Bongino added that Matze’s termination statement “is an outrageous attack on people who have done nothing but work day and night to get this site back up and to fight back against these cancel culture goons. And to get knee-capped like this by someone we trusted is a disgrace.”
