Parler, a “free speech” social network that attracted millions of Donald Trump’s audience in preparation for last year’s U.S. election, was on the run in January.
Following the Capitol riots that followed the vote, the app, which brings Republican fundraiser Rebekah Mercer, was removed by Apple and Google from their stores and refused to accept work by Amazon. Even his social media company quit. A few weeks later, their boss, John Matze, was fired after a feud with Mercer.
Join George Farmer, a 31-year-old former hedge fund partner and son studying at Oxford University in the British baron, who is preparing a way to return to the opposition program since he became their chief in May.
“My goal is to provide a platform for the free and the speechless who feel that many have been removed,” Farmer told the Financial Times. “It’s like we’re a ‘opposition’ company.”
A former Brexit candidate in the UK, a well-spoken but fraudulent farmer wants to ensure that Parler can reach more people than his Trump supporters and make the program a popular platform, while maintaining its limits.
He plans to “vigorously” sell the program, which today has about 30 employees, this quarter, and promises to have “more and more successful”, as well as new business ventures and new potential streams. “The platform will be very different in a year,” Farmer said.
‘What was there was not a viable business’
Parler launched in 2018 as a means of self-reliance “non-partisan”, leading to political dialogue, gun rights and ideological ideologies for example.
Ms Mercer said she set up the company to deal with “more violence than our subordinates”. It has a similar Twitter profile – where users can post and follow others, including the general public.
As Facebook and Twitter stepped up their efforts to combat misconceptions, hate speech and incitement to violence at the end of the 2020 election, Parler attracted the right groups and was promoted by many Republicans.
Prior to joining the program, Farmer worked at Red Kite, a hedge fund founded by his father Michael Farmer, a former steel trader known as ‘Mr Copper’ and a former treasurer of the UK Conservative.
The farmer had led the UK group in Turning Point, a youth group in the United States, and was keen for Britain to leave the EU, where he explained as a “poison, a socialist, a magician”.
Her trip from London to the front of the U.S. war came after she met Candace Owens, a Trump activist, at the end of 2018. The two dated just two and a half weeks later.
After becoming a “self-proclaimed independent” in the US, Farmer is said to have approached Parler’s allies in early 2021 to offer itself as a “steady hand” when Amazon cut off access to website pages, citing repeated repeated failures.
“What was there was not a viable business,” he said, adding that he served for several months as a superintendent before taking on a major role. “To do this, my goal was to establish a restructuring project that would involve business expertise and all aspects of the industry.”
This included hiring new engineers and finding new vendors – for example on Amazon Web Services and the services of a well-known Los Angeles web-based web development team at SkySilk.
Meeting the requirements to return to the software market also means redesigning its accounting systems, and creating a “transparent type” that combines human and archeological analysis, he said. He spoke after researchers at Stanford University found that Parler’s authoritative approach saw “spam, financial fraud and pornographic accounts” on the rise earlier this year.
Today, the gentle rate depends on the tool the user has; Parler should filter those that violate Apple’s rules on iOS devices, for example, but not Android devices or its website.
However, Farmer said the program continues to adhere to its free will, adding that while the causes of violence should not be allowed, other simple expressions should be allowed.
“Big Tech was heavily criticized [Trump’s victory in] 2016. Their unwavering response was to follow through, “he said. Confusion is at the risk of settling the dispute. “
Millions of users
Parler is still relatively small compared to his Big Tech rivals and does not attract the masses he used before being launched in January, but “is close to following what we had in the fourth quarter of last year”, according to Farmer. The platform has about a million users a month and 16m total accounts, he said. Unlike Twitter, it has 206m users per month.
Its future success will depend on whether it can address the concerns of cyber failure and user ignorance. It can entice critics and critics, especially on the right, and Farmer will be able to offer financial benefits to well-known people who post only to Parler.
The main focus should be on Trump himself, who struggled to find ways to communicate with his supporters after being suspended on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The blog launched by Trump in May was removed a few weeks later.
The farmer said Parler had had “good talks” with the Trump administration, adding that he still hoped the politician would join the platform. “He’s the best example of a candidate,” he said.
Trump’s anti-Trump rival, Gettr, was launched in July but has already faced problems after releasing user notifications. The farmer said he believed Parler was more civilized than his rivals, and welcomed political users.
He also said he plans to differentiate Parler’s income from digital advertising. This could include allowing brands to support emails sent to consumers, selling clothing and advertising, and creating a kind of membership similar to the Guardian newspaper.
“Media products will always be free but I think there is a lot that people want to buy on the market,” he said.
But there is no urgency, he admitted, as the company has “other shareholders who support the organization”. According to PitchBook, his first-aiders include Mercer and their father, Robert Mercer of the hedge fund, private founder and crypto investor Jeffrey Wernick, and political analyst Dan Bongino.
The farmer declined to comment on Ms Mercer’s involvement with the company, but said the two had a “good relationship”.
He conceded that if Big Tech’s social media platforms let go, instead of tightening up, their reading minds, it could be a “business risk”. But he added: “I would like to see the world become a hotbed of controversy. Do I see it on the cards recently? No. ”