The layoffs seem to have begun just after Ye's acquisition was called off:
Parler parent company Parlement Technologies has cut the "majority" of its staff in recent weeks, according to a new report. The Verge reports that the company has slashed close to 75 percent of staff, including several executives, in recent weeks with "approximately 20" workers remaining between both entities at the end of 2022.
Parler didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the layoffs or how many staffers remain. The layoffs seem to roughly coincide with other difficulties for the "free speech" social media app. Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, had struck a deal to buy the service for an undisclosed amount in October. In December, Parlement Technologies announced the deal was off, with a Parler rep claiming the decision had been made in mid-November due to Ye's "ongoing business difficulties." Layoffs began shortly after, at the end of November, The Verge now reports.
Parler was originally launched in 2018, but rose to prominence in 2020 as several high profile Republicans announced they were leaving Twitter in favor of Parler. The app billed itself as a "free speech" social network that eschewed the "censorship" of mainstream social media platforms like Twitter. It gained popularity as a free-wheeling alternative that had few rules or moderation policies.
This seems to be following the path that has already been taken by Twitter, Meta and other social media sites. Is it a temporary phenomenon or a sign of changing attitudes?
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Parler's new owner immediately took the social network offline:
Months after Ye dropped his bid, Parler has a new owner... and is out of commission for the time being. Starboard, the owner of pro-conservative news outlets like American Wire News, has shut down Parler on a temporary but indefinite basis after completing its acquisition of the social network from Parlement Technologies. The buyer says it will conduct a "strategic assessment" of the platform during the downtime, and hopes to integrate Parler's audience into all its existing channels.
Starboard isn't shy about its strategy. While it still sees a market for communities that believe they've been censored or marginalized, it considers a Parler revamp virtually necessary. "No reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more," the company says.
Parler launched in 2018 as a self-proclaimed free speech alternative to Twitter, which some conservatives claim is biased against right-wing views. It had few rules or moderation controls. Like Gab, though, it also became a haven for people with extreme views. Parler drew flak in January 2021 after word that people involved in the Capitol attack used the social platform to coordinate. Apple and Google kicked Parler off their respective app stores until it improved moderation and kept out users inciting violence.
[...] In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Starboard chief Ryan Coyne says he expects to keep users on Parler despite rivalries with other sites, such as former President Trump's Truth Social. However, the absence of a revival date doesn't leave members many options. For now, they'll have to use other platforms to express themselves.
Previously: Parler Has Reportedly Cut 'Majority' of Staff in Recent Weeks
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12, @06:26PM
Somebody's got to pay the hosting fees (looking at you Kanye).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Thursday January 12, @06:37PM (2 children)
The broad industry layoffs are just the business cycle. We had a very favorable lending climate, now it's tightening.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12, @07:08PM (1 child)
Free speech outlook: cloudy
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 12, @08:54PM
Behind every internet cloud is a cat6 lining.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SingularityPhoenix on Thursday January 12, @06:43PM (9 children)
>Is it a temporary phenomenon or a sign of changing attitudes?
Parler is too small to call a trend setter if a 75% staff reduction takes it from 80 employees to 20.
I think a lot of things are being driven by the end of the pandemic. Social media companies boomed during the pandemic, and are busting now its over, and people are returning to their old socializing habits. These companies are subsequently cutting costs by laying off employees.
I worked at a mine that would bulk up on employees when prices were high, and lay off when prices dropped. This isn't tech or social media specific.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Thursday January 12, @07:03PM (2 children)
And apparently that's also a big part of why they were so easy to embargo. If they've only got 80 employees, then a bunch of the stuff must have been outsourced to other companies as 80 isn't enough even to just ensure that there's no illegal content. (As in actually illegal content like child porn and the like on the site)
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12, @07:10PM (1 child)
Child porn? On parler? I would be thinking.... death threats to the President kind of illegal. But meh, if child porn sounds better go with that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 12, @08:04PM
You would need to put a nonzero amount of credence in their free speech claims to think they would leave that stuff up...
But we all knew they would immediately censor whatever the fuck they wanted to, as they immediately did, and as is their right. Although the hypocrisy is notable.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by istartedi on Thursday January 12, @07:52PM (4 children)
Unless small is the trend. Craigslist is famous for running a major site with double-digit employee counts. I don't know how they police it, as that seems like it would require considerable human input; but they almost certainly don't have a lot of dead weight middle managers and they are not releasing "Craigslist Beta, Digg Edition" any time soon. I'm not sure how much staff is used to create anti-features at major sites; but I know I'd be making major cuts there if I were in charge. Of course I'm biased as a Soylentil who actually participates in a site that started as a reaction to that very kind of change.
Aside from his hysterics, Radically Lean might be the direction in which Musk is taking Twitter, and if it succeeds it could indeed be a trend--a bad one for the people who were using huge layers of social media bloat to fund their Bay Area lifestyle, the real estate agents and various others who get the trickle-down from all that.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 12, @08:20PM
Usenet called and wants... no, it doesn't want anything from this side.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13, @02:12AM
Maybe you'd be infamous later for being the one who started Skynet... 😉
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Friday January 13, @03:42AM (1 child)
Craigslist simply lets users flag improper posts. If enough people flag a posting they usually take it down.
"It is easier to fool someone than it is to convince them that they have been fooled" Mark Twain
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday January 13, @09:44PM
So, basically Slash-like moderation with things that fall below a threshold removed. IMHO, moderation is mostly a solved problem and the mainstream social media sites insist on their crude "thumbs" and "stars" because they know it drives page views at the expense of quality, ala "vast wasteland".
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(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Thursday January 12, @09:20PM
Following the Elon Musk trend of "we don't need all these employees".
Then again maybe 5d chess level Elon should have kept the sales staff and finance department. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-twitter-sued-rent-nonpayment-san-francisco-office/ [cbsnews.com]
(Score: 4, Funny) by mcgrew on Thursday January 12, @08:56PM
Whoda thunkit?
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Thursday January 12, @09:26PM (1 child)
it's the phase of the credit expansion/contraction cycle we are in. rising interest rates, high inflation, very much a tightening of free capital and speculative capital aimed at tech. Until interest rates drop and cash is getting thrown around more tech is going to cut back, survive, and wait. Commodities and real assets are where money is running to right now.
This crunch is going to hit hard. Inflation is going to remain high for quite a bit longer. Depending on what our masters do, there is a very real possibility of going hyper-inflation. It looks like Japan chose that path at least. It's going to be a fun ride.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13, @01:08AM
It's like Capital decided it has the advantage over Workers and is flexing its muscles. Anyone holding cash, bonds or a pension is now going to learn the difference between an IOU and an asset.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Phoenix666 on Thursday January 12, @09:26PM (4 children)
That's the cycle of tech. I don't know if it has always been that way, but it certainly has been since I entered the tech workforce in the 90's. So that could be all this is.
On the other hand, it also could be that humans are rebalancing the place of social media in their lives. That is, social media amplifies human social interaction. It has always been a mix of good and bad, but since most people typically only know around 120 people it was not previously possible to get dog-piled by 1 million people for using the wrong pronouns; it used to be that if your circle of acquaintances turned on you for some reason (deserved, or undeserved), you could find yourself a new circle and enjoy a relative tabula rasa. Online, your social history follows you. If people are waking up to the toxicity of that and reducing their amount of social media use, then it's natural that the social media companies would be seeing the reduction in engagement that they sell to advertisers, and therefore the number of people they can employ.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Techlectica on Friday January 13, @08:03AM (3 children)
Or it could be that, after Parler was a factor in a good chunk of their user base being convicted in the Jan. 6 coup attempt due to Parler conversations and pictures being exfiltrated by hackers, turned over to authorities and used as evidence, the rest of their user base decided that adequately staffed security departments are more important than "free speech" policies being used to justify skeleton crews when you want to discuss and coordinate overthrowing the government. Their advertising revenue may have taken a bit of a dip too after that particular association and exposure.
(Score: 1) by Techlectica on Friday January 13, @08:20AM (1 child)
Note that the reason for Meta layoffs are pretty different than they are for Twitter and Parler. Twitter's moderation changes freaked out 3/4 their advertisers and massively impacted revenue, as I expect also happened to Parler over the last year as Jan. 6 participants were slowly tried and convicted in batches like the drip-drip of Chinese water torture.
Meta on the other hand decided to spend a large portion of revenue to fund a completely different research concept/vision that is non-revenue generating and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. That's a combination of a questionable business decision hitting up against the reality of the business cycle, but the executives are of course not going to want to admit they made a questionable choice and are purely blaming the business cycle.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 13, @02:36PM
Tis the way of things.
Bottom-up produces something of value, top-down comes in with shitty ideas (that somehow always reflect the greatness of leadership) and it dies.
(Score: 2) by TheGratefulNet on Saturday January 14, @01:46AM
parler people went to a new site.
called jailer.
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."