Mesa, AZ – Parler, the popular social media application preferred by conservative-minded users, has been taken offline by Big Tech in the most blatant assault yet on freedom of speech in America. The CEO’s of Apple and Google announced on January 8 that the Parler app would be removed from their online app stores unless Parler moderators agreed to adopt censorship standards consistent with those of the two largest social media companies, Facebook and Twitter.

On January 10, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos completed the elimination of Parler from the internet by booting the website from their servers entirely. Citizens for Free Speech (CFFS), a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting and preserving the First Amendment, vociferously condemned the moves.

“CFFS was founded in 2018 when I saw the collusion that was taking place between Twitter, Facebook and Google at that time,” said CFFS Executive Director Patrick Wood in a Cleveland radio interview. “They were ganging up on individuals they didn’t agree with, to disappear them from the internet and from their communication platforms. That’s what’s happening today, except it’s on steroids.”

Parler CEO John Matze condemned the shutdown of his platform, claiming that Twitter and Facebook executives were using last week’s breach at the Capitol building to literally wipe out their competition by blaming Parler for allowing violent posts to go unmoderated.

“It’s devastating is what it is,” Matze said on Sunday of Amazon’s plan to pull the plug.

“They all work together to make sure at the same time we would lose access to not only our apps,  but they’re actually shutting all of our servers off, off the internet.”

Matze’s accusations were supported by a tweet made my Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who added a “heart” or “love” emoji to his screenshot of the “Top Charts” on the Apple App Store. Parler had been the store’s most-downloaded app before the ban, but was gone as of Saturday. Matze responded on his own site before Parler went dark, stating, “

Yeah, we were number one until the fake news rage mob at Twitter and your anti-competitive  riends went after us. That's real cute." He went on to declare the assault on Parler, and by  extension the millions of conservatives who used it as a bastion of free speech, a “coordinated  attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the marketplace.”

The obvious coordination between Dorsey, Bezos, and Facebook boss Mark Zuckerburg Republican Rep. Devin Nunes calling for the Department of Justice to investigate possible violations of antitrust laws, civil rights, and RICO statutes.

“They have just destroyed what is likely a billion-dollar company. Poof, it’s gone,” Nunes said on Fox News Sunday morning. But it’s more than just the financial aspect to that. Republicans have no way to communicate. If — and it doesn’t even matter if you’re a Republican or conservative.”

It’s the latter issue that has Wood and CFFS most concerned.

“This coup de ’tat is taking place from inside Big Tech,” Wood declared, “to completely wipe out the First Amendment. This full-court press on the First Amendment is absolutely unprecedented.”

CFFS is calling upon all citizens of good faith, regardless of political ideology, to stand up to the Silicon Valley technocrats who are using their power to control—and in fact silence—dissenting points of view. The United States is a country founded on the freedom for all voices to be heard, and the survival of the republic is dependent upon that liberty being preserved.

For more information about CFFS please visit www.CitizensForFreeSpeech.org
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Contact:
Bob Frantz
National Director of Communications
[email protected]

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