‘Fingers Crossed’: Dan Bongino Says ‘Monday Looks Good’ For Parler’s Return

Speaking with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Parler co-owner Dan Bongino said that the social media platform could resume running again early next week.

“We’re shooting for Monday,” said Bongino. “Monday looks good. Fingers crossed.”

On January 11, Amazon banned the social media platform Parler from its cloud hosting service. Amazon said that Parler presented a “very real risk to public safety,” with Reuters reporting, “Amazon suspended Parler from its Amazon Web Services (AWS) unit, for violating AWS’s terms of services by failing to effectively deal with a steady increase in violent content, according to an email by an AWS Trust and Safety team to Parler.”

This came soon after Parler was also removed from Apple and Google’s app stores, who cited similar concerns regarding the moderation of content. Then-CEO John Matze told Fox News that the site will try to “get back online as quickly as possible,” and described the decision by Apple, Google and Amazon as a “coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place.”

Soon after, Parler filed a lawsuit against Amazon, “claiming that Amazon’s suspension of Parler violated antitrust laws and breached the contract between the two entities.”

Earlier this week, John Matze announced in a memo sent to employees that he was terminated by the Parler board, saying “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.”

After Matze’s announcement, Bongino “disputed” his claims.

“I have no personal gripe against John, the CEO, at all; I want to be crystal clear,” Bongino said in a Facebook video on Wednesday, “but John decided to make this public, not us. We were handling it like gentlemen.”

“We were the ones, in fact, fighting to get Parler back up. There was some really bad decisions made from people on the inside, and listen, this isn’t us airing dirty laundry,” Bongino continued. “This is protecting a company that is absolutely committed to free speech, that I put the last year of my life into. Do you actually believe that someone else was on the side of free speech?”

Later, Bongino emphasized that the “relationship with Parler and the CEO did not work out because the CEO’s vision was not ours.”

“Our vision was crystal clear. We needed to get up and fight back, some terrible decisions were made in the past, that led us to getting put down by Amazon and others,” Bongino added.

Unsurprisingly, the issue of content moderation and free speech remained central to Bongino’s statements.

“We could have been (back) up in a week if we just would have bent the knee and followed all the ridiculous Apple edicts to become a heavy moderation site to the left of Twitter. That’s not what we’re gonna do. … We were a free speech site and will remain as such and that’s why it’s taken so long to get back up,” Bongino told viewers.

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