In this Jan. 10, 2021, file photo, the website of the social media platform Parler is displayed in Berlin. John Matze said Wednesday, Feb. 3 - Christophe Gateau/DPA
On Monday, however, Parler said that it had found a new web host that did not rely on Big Tech and was now back up, also claiming that it now has 20m users.
Amazon cited Parler posts which called for the killing of Democrats, journalists and Black Lives Matter activists, while Apple and Google removed Parler from their app stores, saying that it had broken their rules by failing to police its users.
Mark Meckler, Parler's new interim chief executive, said: "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.”
The company added that Parler is now built on "robust, sustainable, independent technology". The Telegraph confirmed that the service is back online, although it will not accept new users until next week.
Founded in 2018 and backed by the conservative investor Rebekah Mercer, Parler became a favoured outlet for many pro-Trump social media stars, as well as hard-Right groups banned from larger services. Despite its "free speech" branding, it has been accused of hair-trigger bans against Left-wing users.
The company was plunged into chaos by the reprisals following the Capitol riot, which journalists and hate group monitors have said was partly planned on the service.
Parler rejected Amazon's claims about its role in the riot, which it called "despicable". It said that "based on the evidence of which we are aware", it had not been used to plan or execute the riot, though it noted that "every social-media platform sometimes unwittingly hosts content that incites violence".
John Matze, Parler's previous chief executive, left the company earlier this month, claiming that he was fired after Ms Mercer took exception to his plan to crack down on terror groups and incitement to violence. Parler's current leadership called his characterisation "inaccurate and misleading".
Until Sunday, Parler's website showed only a banner proclaiming "technical difficulties" and a column of announcements, statements and endorsements from conservative media figures arranged in the format of Parler posts.
07:11 PM
Good night
That's it from us tonight. Tune in here again tomorrow at 7am for the latest tech news.
03:53 PM
Controversial social network Parler returns online
In January, the controversial "free speech social media platform" went from being number one in Apple's US app store to being forced offline over its alleged connection to the storming of the US Capitol Building just days later.
Amazon severed ties with the platform, citing Parler posts which called for the killing of Democrats, journalists and Black Lives Matter activists. Apple and Google also removed the app from their stores.
In a statement, Parler said the site's relaunch was "built on sustainable, independent technology and not reliant on so-called “Big Tech” for its operations."
In a statement, Parler said the site's relaunch was " built on sustainable, independent technology and not reliant on so-called “Big Tech” for its operations."
A private jet aircraft on the tarmac in front of the terminal at Nice Cote d'Azur Airport in Nice, France in February 2021 - Jeremy Suyker/Bloomberg
Bitcoin is fuelling a private jet buying boom for the super rich, as investors see gains from the cryptocurrency's latest surge to a new record of nearly $50,000 over the weekend.
According to UK-based PrivateFly, a jet charter company, over one in ten of all its private jet flights were paid for in Bitcoin last month, representing 19pc of total sales.
After the cryptocurrency's record-breaking year, PrivateFly said they had seen the number of customers making Bitcoin payments increase ten fold.
“While we have accepted Bitcoin payments for many years now, cryptocurrency transactions have really taken off in recent months," said Adam Twidell, PrivateFly CEO.
"These are in line with Bitcoin’s climb in value - to the extent that 13pc of our flights were paid for in this way last month. We have previously seen just 1-2pc each month."
Belgian tech entrepreneur Olivier Janssens, was PrivateFly’s first ever Bitcoin client, when he used Bitcoin to pay for a flight from Brussels to Nice Cote D'Azur back in 2014.
Today, the St Albans-based company enables clients to store Bitcoin in their PrivateFly account, just like any other currency.
Bitcoin's gains are being driven by a belief that the cryptocurrency is set to develop into mainstream asset class.
Earlier in February, Tesla disclosed it had invested $1.5bn (£1.1bn) in bitcoin and vowed to start accepting it as payment for electric cars.
Mastercard also endorsed the digital coin, saying the company would accept Bitcoin on its network later this year.
01:52 PM
Kremlin considers Musk's Clubhouse invite
A Kremlin spokesperson has called Elon Musk's invitation to the Russian President to join him for a conversation on social media network Clubhouse as "interesting".
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the request for President Putin to speak publicly with Musk on the app had not been immediately ruled out, according to Reuters. Instead the Russian government was seeking more details.
Musk issued the invitation to the Kremlin on Saturday.
The Telsa CEO interviewed Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on the audio-only app with in late January and last week, he also said he would hold a public discussion with musician Kanye West.
.@KremlinRussia_E would you like join me for a conversation on Clubhouse?
Electric vehicle push comes under the leadership of new CEO Thierry Bollore, who was previously the boss at Renault - Denis Balibouse/Reuters
Britain’s biggest car maker is going all-electric by 2025, with plans to "re-imagine" the Jaguar Land Rover brand as a rival to Elon Musk's Tesla.
Jaguar will not develop cars with new internal combustion engines after the current production run ends.
Land Rover is also going electric, with the first battery-powered model going on sale in 2024. All the company’s vehicles will have an electric option by the end of the decade.
My colleague Alan Tovey has the full story. Read it here.
12:51 PM
ICYMI: Your car data could be sold to the highest bidder
Your commute home is fast becoming a treasure trove of data for carmakers, James Titcomb wrote this weekend.
Car companies are packing vehicles full of sensors which can provide useful data to insurers, tech giants and advertisers.
For as long as cars have included digital components, manufacturers have thought about ways to take advantage of the information, such as diagnostic readings, they can collect. But a streak of developments is now forcing the industry to take the idea more seriously. Cars are becoming packed with sensors as costs come down and as electric motors require them, and as tech-savvy consumers demand high-end electronics.
GM, Renault, Fiat Chrysler and Volvo also have deals with tech giants. Data hubs of car information are being packaged up and sold. Morgan Stanley has estimated if a company such as Ford can monetise its car data successfully it could double its market value.
Solving Covid 'very, very easy' compared to climate change, says Bill Gates
Bill Gates has said that solving Covid would look easy next to tackling the problems presented by climate change, the BBC reports. The billionaire, who is worth around $130bn, said: "We've never made a transition like we're talking about doing in the next 30 years. There is no precedent for this."
He called on governments to intervene to push the private sector towards more decarbonisation. Mr Gates said that cutting carbon from the economy would require a "constant 30-year push".
While countries such as the UK have had some success in moving its electricity grid towards more renewable energy sources, moving transport and heating toward green energy is likely to prove even more challenging.
11:56 AM
Uber chief executive says ready to "go further" on worker rights
Dara Khosrowshahi, the chief executive of Uber, has said he is “ready to do more and go much further” to improve working conditions for drivers and riders in Europe, Bloomberg reports.
Khosrowshahi said “legal ambiguity” made it difficult to provide key benefits while also classing drivers and riders as contractors. In a blog post, Khosrowshahi said workers deserved the right to decide on flexibility and control over how they work.
He said: “This standard (for platform work) needs to recognise the value of independent work, and be grounded in principles drivers and couriers say are most important to them... We believe a new approach is possible - one where having access to protections and benefits doesn’t come at the cost of flexibility and of job creation,”
It comes as Uber faces legal challenges, including in the Supreme Court in the UK, over whether its Uber drivers should be classed as workers, and receive benefits, or be classed as freelancers. A decision in the case is due as soon as Friday. In the EU, the European Commission is preparing a consultation into the rights of workers in the gig economy.
Uber has long argued it does not employ its drivers who have flexibility over how and when they work. But legal challenges have argued that drivers should have more rights, such as sick pay and holiday.
10:52 AM
Nissan says it is not in discussions over an Apple car
Japanese carmaker Nissan has said it is not in discussions over a potential Apple car after reports over the weekend it had been approached about manufacturing by the iPhone maker.
On Monday, Nissan told Reuters: “We are not in talks with Apple. However, Nissan is always open to exploring collaborations and partnerships to accelerate industry transformation.”
The FT reported on Sunday there had been brief talks between Apple and the carmaker. It follows similar reports that Apple and Hyundai held talks, which were also called off.
The former chairman of BT, Sir Mike Rake is to step down from Huawei's UK board, Sky News reports. It is the second prominent departure in six months, after the exit of Lord Browne of Madingley, the former boss of BP, stood down as its chairman.
Sir Mike said: "Huawei has made a major contribution to the UK economy, its infrastructure, research capabilities and competitiveness for 20 years with transparency and openness."I have been pleased to have provided advice and support to them since 2019 and particularly with the issues they have recently faced in this country."
Sky reported that Sir Mike had made the call after considering the fact he was unlikely to be able to help Huawei grow its business in the UK, given that it has been banned from being used in new installations from September this year.
Victor Zhang, Huawei's UK vice president, said: ""A highly respected business leader and former chairman of BT Group, Sir Mike brought his wealth of telecommunications knowledge to the Huawei UK board in 2020, at a time when the country was fighting the pandemic and keeping Britain connected was Huawei's primary objective.
"I'd like to thank Sir Mike for his support and look forward to working with him in future."
The Chinese telecoms company is facing tough curbs in Britain. Mobile operators have been barred from buying new 5G kit from Huawei since January and will be blocked from installing it later this year. They will then have to ultimately strip out all Huawei equipment from their 5G networks.
The telecoms company has been under accused of posing a security risk by Conservative MPs and US officials, which it has always denied.
It comes as the government considers new measures that would also toughen up rules on foreign takeovers of UK companies.
09:56 AM
Clubhouse reviewing data policies
Clubhouse, the buzzy audio only social network that has taken Silicon Valley by storm, has said it is reviewing its data protection policies after a report found that private user information was left vulnerable to access by the Chinese government.
Stanford researchers published a report that found that users who had downloaded the app in China could have had their data including raw audio and user metadata transmitted via Chinese servers. This was because a Chinese based tech firm, Agora Inc, was providing back-end services to Clubhouse.
Clubhouse said in a statement: “With the help of researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory, we have identified a few areas where we can further strengthen our data protection," the company said in a statement published here by the research group on Friday.
“Over the next 72 hours, we are rolling out changes to add additional encryption and blocks to prevent Clubhouse clients from ever transmitting pings to Chinese servers. We also plan to engage an external data security firm to review and validate these changes.”
09:18 AM
Google and Facebook near deal to pay for news
Google and Facebook are close to agreeing to a deal that could see the tech giants pay for news in Australia.
An Australian Treasury minister said he had held talks with Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Sundar Pichai that had seen progress on terms for “significant commercial deals”.
Australia is threatening to force Google and Facebook into mandatory deals with news publishers that would see the tech giants paying for providing links to news stories in news feed and in search results. Google has warned this could break the very way the internet works and has threatened to pull out of the country.
However, Australian treasury minister Josh Frydenberg said early on Monday:
“We’ve made real progress, I think, in the last 48 to 72 hours and I think we’re going to see some significant commercial deals which could be of real benefit to the domestic media landscape and see journalists rewarded financially for generating original content, as it should be, and this is a world-leading reform.”
It comes after Microsoft said it was willing to pay to provide its services in Australia and would offer to replace Google, should the search engine giant withdraw from the Australian market.
08:33 AM
Elon happy for you to sell your Doge
Elon Musk has said he is happy for holders of Dogecoin, a joke cryptocurrency that has seen frenzied buying, to sell their coins. The Tesla boss said his main concern was "too much concentration" in the digital coin.
Dogecoin has been repeatedly promoted by Musk, a fan of memes - and Dogecoin is essentially just that, a meme.
The cryptocurrency Dogecoin has gone through a number of price pumps as people jump into buying the coin on the back of various internet trends. It is fundamentally valueless, with an unlimited supply and almost no utility. Its price has surged from around one cent to about five cents.
If major Dogecoin holders sell most of their coins, it will get my full support. Too much concentration is the only real issue imo.
Over the past 12 months, the digital coin has gone from lows of around $5,000 to almost ten times that. But those are not the only staggering numbers from the digital con's rise.
Over the weekend, Bitcoin proponents were promoting a Twitter thread that extolled the environmental benefits of Bitcoin. The claims included that the digital coin was pushing forward the renewables industry and that Bitcoin was still only a small part of the broader carbon footprint of the payments industry.
The thread was even liked by Elon Musk, who has extolled the green credentials of his car company, Tesla.
However, environmental experts were unconvinced.
Bitcoin is the product of climate change denialism and greed. Its supporters are continuously repeating the same line of broken arguments to justify the fact that it's a system built on requirement to waste resources. As much as they try, the genie won't go back into the bottle. https://t.co/zTstfiStcX
Bitcoin enthusiasts have been keen to claim that digital coins are pushing forward renewables production. Maybe in some cases they are. But as Digiconomist points out, at the moment, Bitcoin's carbon footprint is similar to that of New Zealand, and it requires more energy than Chile. A single transaction uses up the equivalent of 678,302 Visa transactions.
It would be interesting to hear a few more talking heads quizzed on those numbers, and what to do about them. You can read my piece from a couple of weeks back on the dirty world of Bitcoin mining here.
08:14 AM
Bitcoin closes in on $50,000
The price of one Bitcoin fell back from almost $50,000 on Monday morning as the digital coin continued to set new records over the weekend after a week that saw a flurry of companies join the cryptocurrency gold rush.
One digital coin is now worth just over $47,000. Investors took some profits and prices dropped from a record high of $49,700 in trading in Asia.
Despite widespread concerns over fraud, its environmental impact and money-laundering, executives have been lining up for a spot on daytime business TV to pontificate over the future of Bitcoin.
Many Americans wonder how much money to withdraw from their retirement savings each year, and financial expert Suze Orman believes that the 4% retirement rule is no longer the answer. Orman, known for her blunt and hard-hitting financial advice, discussed why so many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and her opinion on retirement savings during an interview with SecureSave Co-Founder Devin Miller for Moneywise Don't Miss: The average American couple has saved this much money for retireme
Intel stock continued a 2024 slump in late April after the chip maker provided disappointing guidance. With the shares trading at their lows for this year, CEO Pat Gelsinger bought up Intel stock on the open market. According to forms he filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Gelsinger purchased the stock through a family trust that now owns 39,400 shares.
To Americans, who still get excited for pumpkin spice season, the beverage Starbucks tested in China recently sounds over the top. The reason: Its core customers in America can no longer be counted on to keep buying so it has to dominate China. Starbucks has been a juggernaut, expanding from 165 stores when it went public in 1992 to a company worth nearly $150 billion at its peak.
Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp. and a renowned philanthropist, has been slipping down the ranks of the world’s billionaires. Despite boasting a net worth of nearly $128 billion, Gates is at No. 9 on the Forbes Billionaire Index, a significant drop from his previous position at No. 7 a month ago. This marks his lowest ranking since 1990 when he ranked 16th. Gates has been recognized not only for his immense wealth but also for his environmental advocacy, which makes his ownership of
