SAN FRANCISCO – Parler, the social network that attracted millions of Trump supporters before disappearing from the internet, is online again a month after Amazon and other tech giants cut the company for hosting calls for violence at the time of the Capitol riot.
Obtaining ice by tech giants has made Parler a celebrated cause for conservatives who have complained of being censored, as well as a test case for opening up the internet. It was unclear whether the social network, which positioned itself as a moderately moderate and free speech site, could survive after being blacklisted by the biggest technology companies.
For weeks, the answer seemed to be no. But on Monday, for the first time since January 10, typing parler.com in a web browser returned a login page on the social network – a change that took weeks of work for the small business and led to the departure of its main executive.
Parler executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.
It was unclear how Parler had figured out how to host his website on computer servers, the core technology that underpins any website. Many of the big web hosting companies had already rejected it. For other services needed to run a large website, Parler enlisted the help of a Russian company that once worked for the Russian government and a Seattle company that already supported a neo-Nazi website.
Parler’s return appears to be a victory for small businesses that challenge Big Tech’s dominance. The company had tried to defend the power of companies like Amazon, which stopped hosting Parler’s website on its servers, and Apple and Google, which removed Parler’s mobile app from their app stores.
Parler had become a center of conversation on the right last year, when millions of people on the far right migrated to the platform because of what they considered censorship of conservative voices by Facebook, Twitter and Google. Much of Parler’s content was benign, but for months before the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill, the site also hosted appeals for violence, hate speech and disinformation.
Days after the turmoil, Amazon, Apple and Google said they cut Parler because she showed that it was not possible to impose their own rules against posts that incited violence. Apple and Google said they would allow the return of Parler’s app if the company could prove that it can effectively police its social network.
After Amazon removed Parler from its web hosting service, Parler sued her, accusing her of antitrust violations and breaking her contract. A federal judge said last month that Amazon’s contract allowed it to terminate the service and refused to force the company to maintain Parler’s hosting, as requested by the start-up.
Parler had more than 15 million users when it went offline and was one of the fastest growing apps in the United States. It is largely funded by Rebekah Mercer, one of the Republican Party’s biggest benefactors.
John Matze, Parler’s co-founder and chief executive, said earlier this month that Mercer had effectively fired him for disagreements over how to run the site. Ms. Mercer hired Mark Meckler, an important voice in the Tea Party movement, to direct Parler.