Parler interim CEO claims no responsibility for Capitol riot
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CHICAGO (NewsNation Now) — Parler interim CEO Mark Meckler called the Facebook Oversight Board’s decision to allow former President Donald Trump to remain banned on the platform “outrageous” and denied claims Parler was responsible for inciting the Capitol riot.
“It’s a complete and total abuse even of their own policies and procedures. They have their outside advisory board that supposedly upheld this,” Meckler said.
“They said that this suspension was within their standards, but they can’t point to any standard that he actually violated. To me, it shows that there are no standards except for double standards.”
Mark Meckler
Facebook’s Oversight Board cited Trump’s posts related to the Jan. 6 riots as the reason for the suspension being upheld. Meckler claimed posts from Democratic members related to the Black Lives Matter protests incited as much violence.
When asked if he believes Parler or the former president played a role in inciting the Capitol Riot, Meckler said “no.”
“What we now know from the charging documents is there were rouge groups, I mean, frankly, idiots and numskulls that plan this stuff. And it had nothing to do with Parler, if it was planned in social media at all,” said Meckler.
He also cited a February report from Forbes that analyzed data from the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, showing that most charging documents in Capitol rioter cases don’t mention Parler.
Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, took over as interim CEO after the ouster of former Parler CEO John Matze, who was forced out of the company after it was taken off the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in light of the Capitol riots.
“I don’t feel responsible for any of this and neither should the platform,” Matze said to tech journalist Kara Swisher on New York Times Opinion’s Sway podcast, recorded as the riot was happening. Apple and Google cited that comment by Matze in their removal of the app.
The app was eventually allowed back on the Apple App Store. In his interview with NewsNation on Wednesday, Meckler denied the platform made any major changes to have their ban removed.
“Our platform remains as it was prior. In other words, uncensored, other than stuff that doesn’t fit within the First Amendment stuff. That’s illegal. But the (Apple) App Store… required that we have one change on the app that resides on the App Store. And that is that content that attacks individuals based on immutable characteristics. This would be things like race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, those cannot be seen on the app that’s downloaded from the App Store,” he said.
Meckler added that content banned on the app would be viewable on their website, though he said most users aren’t seeking that kind of material.
Watch the full interview in the player above