The conservative social media network Parler was purchased by the digital media business Starboard, it was revealed on Friday. Starboard claims that the transaction, in which it purchased Parler for an unknown sum, was completed on Good Friday. Immediately after Starboard’s statement on Friday, the business took down Parler’s website. According to a statement on Parler.com(Opens in a new tab), “no reasonable person believes that a Twitter clone just for conservatives is a viable business any more.”

To be clear, Starboard is not endorsing conservatism with this remark. It’s all about business. The rest of the statement from Starboard praises former Parler CEO George Farmer for the business’s more recent decision to work with its former parent company Parlament Technologies to offer alternative IT and cloud services.

Official Statement from Parler

“We focus on working with groups that are advocating for or otherwise advancing conservative causes or conservative beliefs,” Starboard CEO Ryan Coyne told the Daily Caller News Foundation in 2021, back when Starboard was known as Olympic Media.

Starboard claims to provide digital marketing and ad agency services on its social media channels. The agency had previously collaborated with conservative groups including Turning Point USA and Republican congressmen Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik, and Madison Cawthorn, according to that same 2021 Daily Caller article.

According to Starboard, it would utilise the acquisition to see how it might “begin servicing unsupported online communities.” Following the 2020 presidential election, Parler increased in popularity as right-wing users looked for a more welcoming platform to debate conspiracies and express their rage over the defeat of former president Donald Trump. The platform rose to fame in the run-up to and immediately following the January 6, 2021 events. As Trump supporters rushed the Capitol building, the on-the-scene video was shared on Parler and rapidly went viral online.