Right-wing social media platform Parler to relaunch early next year

NEW YORK – The social media platform Parler, which caters to right-wing voices and was temporarily booted offline following the Jan. 6 insurrection, is relaunching ahead of next year’s presidential elections.

The new owners of the company announced this week the platform is preparing for a “powerful resurgence” that emphasizes “a return to its roots as a robust marketplace of ideas.”

Parler has been offline since April, when it was purchased by the digital media conglomerate Starboard for an undisclosed sum. Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, had also offered to buy the company beforehand, but the agreement collapsed late last year.

The company’s new owner is a limited liability corporation known as PDS Partners.

Elise Pierotti, who is returning as the platform’s chief marketing officer, said PDS consists of herself, Parler’s new CEO Ryan Rhodes and others who are choosing to remain anonymous. Jaco Booyens, an anti-sex trafficking activist, will serve as the chief strategy officer.

Pierotti did not disclose the terms of the deal. She said it was finalized last week and expects the platform to relaunch in the first quarter of next year.

Parler had always had a small user base even among right-wing and libertarian-focused apps that marketed themselves as havens for free speech.

The platform struggled to return online after Amazon stripped it of web-hosting service in early 2021 over its unwillingness to remove posts inciting violence. Pierotti said Parler will no longer be using Amazon’s cloud service AWS. Instead, she said it will rely on other technology including a “hyper-scaled private cloud.”

“As a new company we prefer to not be associated with those events and have taken the steps to combat those issues” with moderation services, she said.

Google and Apple had also removed Parler’s app from their online stores after the insurrection. They later allowed it to return.