UPDATE: Shortly after this story was published Parler reinstated Milo Yiannopoulous’ account. The Gateway Pundit has sent their CEO a follow up email if they will be honoring Milo’s demands for a “messy wine mom badge” and “terms of service immunity.”
Parler, a platform that markets itself as a pro-free speech alternative to Twitter, has banned right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos for making offensive jokes.
Yiannopoulous appears to be something of a canary in a coal mine when it comes to censorship, as he was one of the first high profile cases of Twitter completely censoring someone without a clear violation of the terms of service. He was banned for being “offensive” and his followers making fun of Ghostbusters actress Leslie Jones — not his own direct actions.
Parler went live for many users on Monday, after being offline for roughly a month after Amazon dropped them from their hosting platform.
The platform became a major target for the cancel brigade, who were unhappy that the people they got banned from mainstream platforms were finding a new home where they could reach people who wanted to hear from them.
Naturally, the cancel brigade on the left celebrated getting the scalp.
The National File, who first broke the news of Yiannopoulous’ ban, reports that “eyebrows were raised when it was discovered that their new web hosting provider, SkySilk, bans undefined “hateful content” from being hosted by them, with SkySilk “reserving the right to refuse to provide service” to customers that host “racist, pornographic, hateful material or those which create customer service or abuse issues for us.”
The CEO of SkySilk, Kevin Matossian, issued a statement saying that they are “well aware that Parler has received an aggressive response from those who believe their platform has been used as a safe haven for bad actors.”
Matossian added “let me be clear, SkySilk does not advocate nor condone hate, rather, it advocates the right to private judgement and rejects the role of being the judge, jury and executioner. Unfortunately, too many of our fellow technology providers seem to differ in their position on this subject.”
— SkySilk Cloud (@SkySilkCloud) February 15, 2021
The statement continued that “SkySilk feels that Parler is taking the necessary steps to better monitor its platform and applauds their release of new Community Guidelines.”
When reached for comment by Gateway Pundit, Yiannopoulous said “just had a nice hour-long chat with a senior Parler executive. I said I’d consider coming back if I were immune from all punishments and they built me a custom ‘Messy Wine Mom’ badge. They’re thinking about it.”
While Yiannopoulous was certainly pushing the boundaries with his jokes, it will be interesting to see if the bans and censorship continue once they learn they can get away with it without pushback — the same way it began on Twitter.
Those who still wish to hear from Yiannopoulous can follow him on Telegram and Gab. He also has a new book coming out that will be available for pre-order on March 1, titled Make America Hate Again.
The Gateway Pundit has reached out to Parler for comment and will update this story if one is provided.
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