After being offline for a month, the Parler app is now up and running again. It was shut down in January after the Jan. 6 protests at the United States Capitol. According to a statement given by Mark Meckler, the interim CEO of Parler, "Parler was built to offer a social media platform that protects free speech and values privacy and civil discourse. When Parler was taken offline in January by those who desire to silence tens of millions of Americans, our team came together, determined to keep our promise to our highly engaged community that we would return stronger than ever. We're thrilled to welcome everyone back. Parler is being run by an experienced team and is here to stay. We will thrive as the premier social media platform dedicated to free speech, privacy and civil dialogue."

Parler was removed by Google on January 8 because Google said that the posts on Parler were inciting violence. According to a statement given by Google, "We recognize that there can be reasonable debate about content policies and that it can be difficult for apps to immediately remove all violative content, but for us to distribute an app through Google Play, we do require that apps implement robust moderation for egregious content. In light of this ongoing and urgent public safety threat, we are suspending the app's listings from the Play Store until it addresses these issues." After Google removed Parler, Apple and Amazon followed suit. Now Parler is run independently. According to a statement given by Parler, for the first week that it was back up and running, only existing users would be able to access the app and then new users would be allowed to sign up after that. There were some technical glitches in the early days of its relaunch, but now it is running smoothly.

Screenshots taken from Parler and shared on other social media platforms seem to show users discussing how they would use weapons against political opponents at the Capitol.

Parler had filed a federal lawsuit against Amazon. However, Parler dropped the federal lawsuit and is instead filing a lawsuit in Washington state court. Amazon has its headquarters here. Amazon says that these claims have “no merit.” In a statement given by Amazon, they say, “As shown by the evidence in Parler's federal lawsuit, it was clear that there was significant content on Parler that encouraged and incited violence against others, which is a violation of our terms of service." Amazon Web Services (AWS) said that they dropped Parler because Parler was “unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove" the violent content from their platform. Parler says that this statement is defamation. "The true reason why AWS decided to suspend and/or terminate its contract with Parler was not because of any alleged breach of contract, but because AWS did not want Parler to be able to provide a new platform for conservative voices, including Donald Trump, or to compete effectively against other microblogging platforms such as Twitter," said Parler’s lawyers in the Washington state lawsuit. Parler does not moderate content like Facebook and Twitter. They call themselves “the free speech social network.”

Parler has more than 20 million users and was first launched back in August 2018. According to a news release, “Parler’s new platform is built on robust, sustainable, independent technology.” The platform is currently looking to hire a permanent CEO.

The social media site has been favored by Trump supporters because it is big on promoting unfiltered free speech. It will be interesting to see how Parler’s lawsuit against Amazon will turn out and how Parler will monitor information on its platform going forward.