Ever since Dan Bongino became part owner of Parler, there has been a lot of Fox News activity going on within the company. So much, that their temporary landing page looks like a Fox News advertisement.
In a big tech collaborated effort, the Parler app and website were recently taken down by Apple, Google, and Amazon. To show some sort of life as they work to restore services, Parler has propped up a landing page at Parler.com. On this page are various statements about the importance of freedom of speech, as well as updates from CEO, John Matze, about the status of Parler coming back online.
Parler users that are currently featured on this temporary site are Fox News affiliated; Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, and Dan Bongino. Parler CEO, John Matze (who links to a Fox News article). Parler’s Chief Policy Officer, Amy Peikoff (who is currently posting on Twitter). And lastly, Senator Rand Paul (who is a regular talking head on Fox News). See below…
Why is Parler’s deep affiliation with Fox News a bad thing? Aren’t they speaking about freedom of speech and all the good “feely” things?
Well, for one, Fox News isn’t exactly the conservative network it once was. In fact, most of their personalities could be considered center-left at this point. Chris Wallace was a complete embarrassment during the Trump debate with Biden. Fox News has become the network of the Republican establishment “swamp.”
Fox News has been getting major blowback from viewership that started with their disastrous coverage of the 2020 Presidential Election. Their ratings continue to plummet as Trump supporters are opting to get news from other conservative networks, like OANN and NewsMax. I won’t go over all of the egregious acts by Fox News in the last few months, but you can read more about why they continue to tank in ratings, here.
Why is Parler so deeply involved with Fox News correspondents? If Parler is truly the free speech bastion for all, wouldn’t they be aligned with more politically independent affiliations? Does Dan Bongino having a stake in ownership mean that Parler now has to be a shill for Fox News most of the time?
I think these Fox News personalities are living in the D.C. bubble. The bubble is where they can ignore what the conservative base truly stands for. Trump supporters, and even Trump himself, have shown to be moving away from Fox News in the last year.
I could write an entire article about why I’m not a huge supporter of Parler and the pivotal moments that led up to its failure. Let’s start with CEO, John Matze. Two defining qualities… nice guy, but easily malleable. I think he lost control of Parler when he brought on Mercer and Bongino.
Sure, I’d pick Parler over Twitter any day of the week. But they have so many questionable elements going on with the company:
- Why do they continue to prop up the disgraceful Fox News? Is it just the Bongino connection, or is there more to it?
- What about their big investor, the Rebekah Mercer (Cambridge Analytica Scandal) connection. How does that affect your data privacy? Why did Parler try to hide their relationship with this investor for so long?
- Parler is one of the only social media platforms that requires a photo ID to gain access to premium features of the platform.
- Why did they rely on AWS hosting for so long knowing that they would eventually be taken down? And the timing just so happened to be right before inauguration day, resulting in millions of conservative voices being scattered.
- Why did they participate in the Saudi Nationalist movement’s exodus from Twitter? Parler was founded on (in the beginning) an America-first policy. This policy was quickly changed after taking on 200,000 Saudi Nationalist users. What happened to America-first constitutionalism?
- If a user wants to delete their Parler account, they are banned and the account is set to private. The account is never actually deleted.
I don’t know about you, but to me, the smell of establishment swamp reeks at Parler HQ.
