The Daily Signal - What Happened to Parler Could Happen to You, Former CEO Mark Meckler Warns

Episode Date: June 9, 2021

Mark Meckler stepped in as Parler’s interim CEO after Amazon, Google, and Apple essentially canceled the social media platform.  Meckler says he didn't intend to become CEO of Parler when he called the company in January to ask if he could help, but recognized the gravity of the situation and wanted to do all he could to defend free speech.  “Parler was the point of the spear,” says Meckler, a former leader of Tea Party Patriots who is also president of Citizens for Self-Governance. “And if we allowed Big Tech and the Big Tech oligarchs to take Parler offline and leave it offline permanently, [these tech companies were drawing] a line in the sand that we might never be able to cross again.”  Conservatives must be prepared to respond to opposition from Big Tech companies, he says, because “any conservative, whether you're a conservative business person or you're running a nonprofit organization,” is susceptible to what happened to Parler. Meckler joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss his stint as Parler’s CEO and how the platform ultimately was restored.  We also cover these stories: Vice President Kamala Harris defends the fact that she has not yet visited the southern border amid the ongoing border crisis.  A bipartisan group of senators announces release of the first congressional report detailing security failures that led to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee ask Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate an Antifa attack on journalist Andy Ngo. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Wednesday, June 9th. I'm Doug Blair. And I'm Rachel Del Judas. The former CEO of Parlor, Mark Meckler, says conservative organizations need to be prepared to face opposition from big tech companies just as Parlor did. Today we share Virginia Allen's recent conversation with Meckler. They discussed the fight to get Parlor back online after Amazon, Google, and Apple essentially canceled the social media site and what other conservatives can learn from the ordeal. Don't forget, if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts and encourage others to subscribe. Today's interview was recorded at the Heritage Foundation Resource Bank Conference in Austin, Texas, so please excuse any background noise and chatter.

And now, on to today's top news. In an interview with NBC's Lesterholt, Vice President Kamala Harris defended the fact that she has not yet visited the southern border amidst the ongoing border crisis. Harris, who was assigned March 24th by Biden to be his point person on the border crisis, still has yet to visit the U.S.-Mexico border. Harris did visit Guatemala on Monday and told migrants do not come. But here's what she had to say in her conversation with Holt via NBC. Just quickly put a button. Do you have any plans to visit the border?

At some point, you know, we are going to the border. We've been to the border. So this whole thing about the border, border. We've been to the border. We've been to the border. You haven't been to the border. And I haven't been to Europe. And I don't understand the point that you're making. I'm not discounting the importance of the border. Well, I mention it because I know Republicans have certainly come at you on this, but Democratic Congressman Quayar as a border district has said to you and the president come. You need to see this. Listen, I care about what's happening at the border.

A group of senators, including Democrat Gary Peters and Amy Klobuchar, as well as Republicans Rob Portman and Roy Blunt, announced Tuesday the release of the first congressional report detailing security failures in the run-up to the January 6th attack on the Capitol. The report details the numerous security, planning, and response failures that led to the January 6th assault. Additionally, the report provides recommendations to various departments responsible for capital and D.C. security on how to prevent such an incident in the future. In a statement, ranking member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, Rob Portman said, quote, the January 6th attack on the Capitol was an attack on democracy itself.

Today's joint bipartisan congressional oversight report from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Rules Committee details the security and intelligence failures in the days leading up to the attack, the lack of preparedness at the Capitol, and the slow response as the attack unfolded. He continued, quote, we must address these failures. and make the necessary reforms to ensure this never happens again. Congressman Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, and some of his colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee, are asking that Attorney General Merritt Garland investigate an Antifa attack on journalist Andy No. In a letter to Garland obtained by Town Hall, Jordan asked that Antifa's attack last month on Noe be investigated.

On June 2nd, No tweeted with pictures of his injuries that he was treated in the ER for multiple injuries to my head and body. The letter asks, please explain the Justice Department's current efforts to identify and prosecute individuals involved in the assaults of Mr. Noe and other journalists in violation of federal statute securing their civil rights. Please explain how the Justice Department, in coordination with other relevant federal and state law enforcement agencies, is working to prevent individuals from engaging in violence and intimidation designed to impair the free exercise and enjoyment of their rights and privileges that Mr. Noe and other journalists, possess under the Constitution and laws of the United States.

No was also attacked and beaten by Antifa in June of 2019. On Tuesday, Circuit Court Judge James E. Plowman Jr. ordered the Loudoun County School System to reinstate PE teacher Byron Tanner Cross after it suspended him for opposing policies that would require all teachers to refer to students by their preferred pronouns, regardless of the student's biological sex. The school system suspended Cross, a Christian, after he told the school board during a May 25th public hearing that he could not comply with two proposed transgender policies. Eventually, the Alliance Defending Freedom, a prominent Christian legal aid group, took on Cross's case and sued the school district. In a written statement celebrating the judge's decision, Alliance Defending Freedom President and CEO Michael Farris said,

quote, advocating for solutions they believe in should not cost teachers their jobs. School officials singled out his speech, offered in his private capacity at a public meeting as disruptive and then suspended him for speaking his mind. That's neither legal nor constitutional. Dozens of other teachers have shared their beliefs on various policies without retaliation. Tanner deserves to be treated with the same respect. As of yet, the school board has not released a statement. Now stay tuned for Virginia's conversation with Parlorist former CEO Mark Meckler. Conservative women.

conservative feminist. It's true, we do exist. I'm Virginia Allen, and every Thursday morning on problematic women, Lauren Evans and I sort through the news to bring you stories and interviews that are a particular interest to conservative leaning or problematic women. That is women whose views and opinions are often excluded or mocked by those on the so-called feminist left. We talk about everything from pop culture to policy and politics. Search for problematic women wherever you get your podcasts. I am so pleased to be joined by Mark Meckler, the former CEO of Parlor, and the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, the president of Citizens for Self-Governance and Convention of States Action. Thank you so much for being here.

Glad to be with you. All right. So let's jump right in. You served as a CEO for the social media platform Parlor for about six months. You joined, obviously, during a very, very rocky time. Yes. Parlor had just been kicked off of Apple's App Store out of Google. So talk a little bit about that decision of deciding I'm going to step into this role in this critical time for Parlor and act as their CEO. Yeah, you know, it wasn't so much to act as CEO.

My first thought was I had a friend who was the financier behind Parlor. And so when I saw Parlor get taken down, and the big hit was really Amazon. web services. When they shut off their servers, they went dark, right? So that was the real bad thing. I saw that. I'm just the kind of a person. If there's a firefight, I'm going to run towards the gunfire. And so I called her up and just said, you know, are you okay? And do you need any help? And this is something I find in the conservative movement that's a problem, really, which is a lot of us, when we see somebody get attacked, we see somebody go down, we kind of step back. There's a natural tendency among conservatives to think, well, maybe they did something wrong.

I don't really know. You know, I don't know what's going. I'm busy with that. my own life, my tendency is to step in and lean in. And so really the way it started was me just leaning in and saying, are you okay? And do you need anything? And do you need help? And her immediate response was, yes, I need help. And so that's how the whole thing started. And it really wasn't, do you need help?

Do you need a CEO? It was just do you need help? And I have a background in technology and I have a background in building large organizations with a technological foundation. So it just seemed like I could offer some stuff and moral support as well, well. And so that's really what I went to the table with. And over time, as I started to help, as we had to let the former CEO go, it just seemed like, you know, it was one of those moments, I think, wherever January, somebody says, yeah, we need a CEO and everybody looks at you

and you look over your shoulder like our, who else is here? It was me. And so that's how I ended up as CEO parlor. Wow. Wow. Well, and that was such a, such a critical time for Parlor, like you said, after the January 6th attacks on the Capitol, Parlor, wound up in a really, really challenging position. And Amazon, Google, Apple really went after you guys. Yeah. So what were your thoughts as you were stepping into this position as CEO? What were your thoughts of, okay, these are the things that we need to tackle.

These are the things we need to get resolved in order to get Parlor backup and online for users. Well, obviously, there's a lot. And I've done turnarounds before. So coming in and doing triage is something. I'm pretty comfortable with. And so there are multiple layers to it. You know, you've got to figure out where the bleeding is worst first. And so in this case, it was just the fact that they were dark.

Right. So they were completely offline. They had no technology that allowed them to get back online. So the very first thing was start to find a way to get them rehosted. And hosted, obviously, somewhere off of Amazon Web Services, off of big tech in general, in a safe way. To be fair, there was a great staff in place. And so a lot of this stuff when I stepped in was already going on. It wasn't like I came in and, you know, with a Superman cape and saved the day.

There were great, there was a great team there. They'd been working around the clock. They'd been in the trenches together. They'd been under attack for a while. Stuff was in motion. So what I came in is just triaged, tried to figure out what I thought was good, what was not good, and try to solidify the direction of the organization to getting the technology back online. That was step one.

Yeah, yeah. What did Apple and Google want Parlor to do in order to restore the app to their platform? forms? Well, so there's actually three pieces to this and the sequence matter. So the first thing that happened is the Google Play Store announced they might be taking Parlor off of the Play Store after the January 6th events. That happened specifically because Cheryl Sandberg from Facebook the day before said all of this stuff took place on Parlor. They have an inability to moderate their content for this kind of stuff and it's all their fault. And by the way, history has proved that to be completely untrue. It was really Facebook and Instagram. They represented over two-thirds of the quote-unquote

planning that took place online. It was on Facebook and Instagram. Also, Twitter had a chunk of it. Facebook itself was 54% of all charging documents in the crimes related to January 6th. And mentioned Facebook, 14% Twitter, 14% Instagram, 5% Parlor. So Parlor had almost no rule in this. So she points at Parlor. Google says, we might be taking you off. Apple then does take us off the app store. Both of those things, in my opinion, are survivable hits, right? People already have the apps on their phones, so the apps will still work. We're going to be okay. The next step is the one that really killed us, which is Amazon flip the switches. So the website was hosted on Amazon. This is a warning, by the way, for everybody in the conservative movement. If you're

on AWS, you should contact me. I'll teach you how to get off. They can flip the switch on any of us at any time. I've had a bunch of people tell me, well, you know, you should sue Amazon, and certainly Parlor has done that. They have a billion dollar annual litigation budget. I would challenge anybody as a lawyer, I can tell you, you don't want to face off against that. So those were the three steps that happened. Amazon didn't want anything from the company. I mean, it was just you're down, you're done, you're gone. There was no negotiation. No negotiation whatsoever. It was just, they flipped the switches and we were off. Apple, there were a lot of ongoing negotiations that took place until we came to the current moment a couple of weeks ago when they got back on the app store.

Google, the company never tried to negotiate with Google, and the reason is Google are, they're just censorious tech oligarchs. They were never going to allow Parlor to be a free speech platform. And frankly, because of the operating system, that's an Android operating system, it allows side loading. And for your listeners, you don't know what side loading is. It means that you can download an app straight from a website. You don't have to go through the Google Play Store. And so Android folks could always get the app from Parlor once the Parlor site came back in line. But with Apple, it's 55% of the U.S. phone market.

Only way to get the app is from the app store. So that's why there was a different approach for Google versus Apple. Also, one last thing to say about Apple, well, I don't appreciate what Apple did. I think what they did is very wrong. Apple has a different perspective than the other big tech companies. I don't trust them. I don't like them. I want to be really clear with that.

But they have a pension for data privacy. And that's a big hallmark of parlor, as we believe in data sovereignty. data privacy, data security. Apple is the same way. They don't cooperate with the government in regarding turning over data unless they're forced to. And so this is an important thing that Apple and Parlor had in common. Even though we were at odds, this idea of data sovereignty or data privacy is common to the two companies. That's fascinating. Well, so now Parlor is back up. You were able to work out that negotiation with Apple. What about with Amazon, though? Because they didn't want to negotiate. So how were you all able to get back up and running without

Amazon. So first I want to clarify what happened with Apple, because this is important. So it was not a total win for Parlor. It was about a 75% win, I would say. And I'd have to give credit where it's due. Our Chief Policy Officer, Amy Peacoff, is an absolute genius. And patience of a saint. We worked with Apple for a long time to make this happen. And the compromise, which again, we're not happy with, but was the best we could do. And we're continuing, the company's continuing this negotiation, was that there are certain things that Apple said couldn't appear on the version of the app that's in the app store. So there's a certain amount of content that Apple will censor required was censored in the app. That content is content where somebody is attacked on the basis of immutable characteristics.

So it's race, it's sex, it's gender, it's religious belief. These are things that, and frankly, these are discussions that serve no purpose. Most people don't want to see that content anyway, but that stuff will be filtered out and there's a pop-up that comes up and says Apple doesn't believe you should see this content. If you really want to see this content, use the Android app or log on to the website

at parlor.com where Parlor doesn't filter any of that stuff. Parlor believes in a First Amendment free speech standard meaning if it's legal to say it in the town square you can say it on parlor. It means it might be unpleasant. And we have a troll filter. There's a troll filter on parlor.

It pops up. You wouldn't normally see that kind of content anyway unless you wanted to. But that's the distinction. that had to be made with Apple. And as far as I know, those negotiations are still ongoing with Apple to prove Apple that we think that's the better way to censor or not even censor to produce content that people can make their own choices of what they want to see or not see.

So that's the Apple piece, the Amazon piece to go there. It just required going out and finding people who knew the hosting space in the United States of America because we wanted to be hosted onshore who could find us hosting providers that were safe, secure, and would stand with. us in a firestorm because there's a chance they're going to get hit by the woke mob and attacked for hosting parlor so we needed to know that we had safe and secure hosting and what is parlor's relationship with google right now really no relationship so in other words we're not they're not on the app store or on the google play store at all don't really care the android users get the app directly

from parlor.com moving forward do you feel confident that okay you know parlor has been able to navigate these conversations. Well, we're not going to see this again where, you know, we're essentially forced to go dark. Or is there still something in the back of your mind that thinks we're still in a little bit of a danger area? No, I'm very confident. I think Parlor is set up technologically. Their tech stack is completely off of big tech. It's non-big tech reliant. They continue to build redundancies into the stack. That's really important for anybody out there who's in our movement who wants to be sure they're secure. You know, I talked to a lot of people, they said, well, we trust our hosting provider. I asked them, well, how many hosting providers

do you have? And if they say one, which is what most people say, you don't want to duplicate your expense, my saying in tech is one is none. Because all it takes is one minute, they decide they're going to shut you off and you're dead. I recommend that people have two to three hosting providers. If you have three hosting providers and you lose one, you've got one in a backup. Having one is very dangerous. Parlor has been, is continuing to build redundancy. I'm really comfortable with the solidity of the technology. They've rebuilt the platform from the ground up, literally, so the technology is now much better than it was before they went dark. I think they're positioned really well on a go-forward basis. And you have just announced that you have stepped down.

Yep. As the CEO of Parlor, George Farmer is taking over. Talk a little bit about that decision to step away. Yeah, for me, it was never intended to be permanent. I didn't go in expecting to be CEO, right? And so I have a passion, and that's restoring the country to self-governance. The reason that I went to parlor, I explained I had a friend who was behind parlor, but also the fight for free speech is the fight. In other words, it doesn't matter if you're a conservative, libertarian, a free thinker in America, it doesn't matter what your issue is. If you're issues guns, if you're issues taxes, if you're issues regulatory reform, if it's Convention of States like me, if you can't speak online, you're done. It's that simple. And so to me, Parlor was the point of the spear. And if we allowed

big tech and the big tech oligarchs to take parlor offline and leave it offline permanently, it drew a line in the sand that we might never be able to cross again. So for me, the issue was get parlor back online, help them get back into the app start. And again, it's important to me to be really clear. I didn't do all that, right? There's a great staff there. Amy Peacoff is incredible. George Farmer has now taken over to take the company into the future. Becca Mercer, who is the financier behind Parlor, a great warrior patriot. This was very, really a team effort. I stepped into the middle of a team, so frankly, I deserve very little of the credit. That's so, so critical to have that solid team behind you and working with you.

Well, you know, I think one of the reasons why Americans were so frustrated by what they were seeing with Parlor is, you know, for so long, especially as conservatives, we hold to a value of, okay, you know, if you're seeing something that you don't like, be entrepreneurial. Go start your own. That's what Parlor did. It said, we don't like what we're seeing, you know, on Twitter, on Facebook, they started their own social media platform, and then they were essentially punished for doing so. What are your thoughts on this? Yeah, so I think it's a moment of reckoning, and I would agree with you. This is what we've always been told, and this is what the left says to the right, hey, if you don't like Facebook, if you don't like Twitter, build your own. It's not easy

to do, by the way. And it's not really the technology. It's getting the people onto the platform, that's the hard part. And so once Parlor had done that, I think it was seen as an existential threat by folks at Twitter and Facebook. We know that Cheryl Sandberg struck out against the company. And there are a couple of reasons why. One is they frankly have enough money. I mean, how much money does Zuckerberg need or Facebook need or Twitter need, right? It's not a money thing for them anymore.

It is a control thing. And what they didn't like is Parlor was outside of their realm of control. Parlor truly is a free speech platform. They don't like free speech. So that was very threatening to them. A lot of people were going there for free speech. That's number one. Number two, it breaks their financial model.

Their financial model is that they own your data. They own my data. They consider you and I a commodity, not human beings, but numbers and facts and figures and traffic, right? That's how they look at human beings. Parlor was an entirely different and is an entirely different model. Parlor believes in data sovereignty. And what that means is you own your own data.

Your data is yours. You are your data. And Parlor doesn't monetize data. And so the idea that a social media platform could exist without monetizing data is very dangerous to Facebook and Twitter and these other social media platforms. Parlor is monetized through advertising dollars only. It's actually more like a radio station. So when people want to advertise on Parlor, they're advertising it to the stream of one of the influencers and they're buying ad space in those streams. I would say in generally, it's not as

lucrative as selling people's data, but it's also moral and ethical. And I don't believe that selling people's data is. Yeah, yeah. So as we have these conversations about big tech, how do we think about actually accepting that challenge as conservatives and, you know, taking practical steps to push back? I think the biggest thing is to take a big swig of reality, and it's not very tasty, and it's really ugly. And my experience now in going around the conservative moon and talking to people about it. Most people still have not accepted that what happened to Parlor could happen to them. They see it as some sort of outlier, but it's not an outlier. You know, it's happened to James O'Keefe at Veritas. It's happened to other people in a variety of ways. Prager, you demonetized on YouTube.

We are under their thumb. And any conservative, whether you're a conservative business person or you're running a nonprofit organization, if you believe that it's not going to happen to you, then you're just foolish. Eventually it is going to happen to you. By the way, it might be happening to you right now and you don't even know it. Fifty-five percent of all websites in the world are hosted on AWS Amazon Web Services. That means they could look at your data. And they are looking at your data if they can. It also means they can flip the switch on you anytime they consider you too dangerous, inappropriate, politically incorrect, and there's not much you can do. So we as conservatives have to accept that reality and then we have to build around it. We have to build

a conservative libertarian infrastructure that supports free speech. I briefly want to ask you about Section 230. That's a piece of legislation that really protects social media platforms from being held liable for what is posted on their sites. There's a lot of talk about reforming Section 230. What are your thoughts on this? Yeah, I've been involved in the technology industry. I actually remember when 230 was put in place as part of the Communications Decency Act. I've been doing Internet advertising law since 93.

So that was in 1996. You got the CDA. 230 is part of the CDA. the real question in the in in in two 30 is about good faith there's these words good faith and then there's another phrase in there otherwise objectionable so in other words these social media platforms have the authority to remove content that's otherwise objectionable as long as they do it in good faith so the question what does that mean and those are incredibly vague terms right well now they're using it to take down things that they find politically objectionable or objectionable to their standards of

what's politically correct It's a very dangerous place we find ourselves in. My position is very similar to what the Heritage Foundation believes. They put out a paper, a great paper, about we need to reform 230, not remove 230. I think if we remove 230, what happens is comment sections, for example, on the daily signal, you would be able to have no comment section because you would be liable for everything in the comment section. And companies that exist on the web, they just can't do it. It's impossible to survive.

So I think reform is necessary. but I also want to caution conservatives on this issue, we're not going to get it done with Democrats in control of Congress in the White House. And so that means for now that's not our focus. The theoretical discussion can be had. We shouldn't waste a lot of energy on it because it's kind of dead letter until we have a Republican Congress. Yeah. Well, and right now, as the new CEO of Parlor, George Farmer,

why do you see him as the right person to be really moving Parlor forward right now in really critical times? Yeah, you know, I mean, it's time. will tell, I would say there's two reasons. I mean, he's young, which is a good thing, I think, for a social media platform. He grew up in the social media era. I'm an old guy. I'm 59 years old. So comparatively, really, he's a young guy. For those who don't know, he's married to Candace Owens, who obviously is in the heart of the conservative movement. It's kind of a firebrand and a lightning rod in the movement. Absolutely a free thinker. And I think also importantly, somebody who falls in the center of what we referred to as the red pill movement, right? So she came from the left, came to the right,

working to help other people transition over. It seems to me that's a good influence for the company right now. Yeah. Well, talk a little bit about what you're up to. I know you never stopped doing your other job, but talk a little bit about what you're focused on now. Yeah, so my main passion is to take power away from Washington, D.C., and give it back to the people. I was one of the founders of the Tea Party movement. So I watched that wave in 2010. We took over Congress. We We had the biggest sweep since 1938. I thought everything would change and nothing changed. I mean, it was really, it was stunning, it was disheartening.

It made me a lot more cynical. We heard that if we took the Senate in 2012, everything would change, nothing changed. And so I realized that there was a bigger problem. The bigger problem is that it's not about personnel. We have a structural problem in Washington, D.C. We've broken the structure of our system of governance. The founder set up this beautifully well-balanced structure. it was intended to balance the states against the federal government, the branches against each other at the federal level.

Over the last 115 years, we've broken that in a lot of different ways, primarily Congress doing things, and then the Supreme Court and the federal court saying it's okay. Simply put what we've done is we took a government that was designed around a limited set of enumerated powers, and we flipped that on its head, and we've given them broad unenumerated powers in the interpretation of the Commerce Clause, and general welfare clause, necessary and proper clause, right? things that the founders never intended, and we've taken all that power away from the people in the states. So the Convention of States Project uses Article 5 of the Constitution. The second clause says whenever two-thirds of the states should ask for it, then Congress calls a convention.

We get together in convention. We debate and potentially propose amendments, and we send them out to the states for ratification. The purpose is take the power away from the federal government and give it back to the people in the states where it belongs. So that's my passion, and that's what I'm back to doing full-time. That's wonderful. That's such critical work so important, and we're glad that you're pursuing that. Thank you. Mr. Beckler, thank you so much your time. We really appreciate you coming on. Thanks for having me. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast.

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