Parler

Parler is an American microblogging and social networking service launched in August 2018. It has a significant user base of Donald Trump supporters, conservatives, conspiracy theorists, and right-wing extremists. The service is popular among people who have been banned from mainstream social networks or oppose their moderation policies. In June 2019, Parler said its user base more than doubled when around 200,000 accounts from Saudi Arabia signed up to the network. As of November 2020, the service had about 4 million active users and over 10 million total users.

About Parler in brief

Summary Parler Parler is an American microblogging and social networking service launched in August 2018. Parler has a significant user base of Donald Trump supporters, conservatives, conspiracy theorists, and right-wing extremists. The service is popular among people who have been banned from mainstream social networks or oppose their moderation policies. In June 2019, Parler said its user base more than doubled when around 200,000 accounts from Saudi Arabia signed up to the network. As of November 2020, the service had about 4 million active users and over 10 million total users. However, journalists and users have criticized the service for content policies that are more restrictive than the company portrays and sometimes more Restrictive than those of its competitors. Some users reported being banned from Parler for espousing left-wing viewpoints in June 2020, and the service has been criticized for its moderation policies in the past for being too restrictive and too lenient with its content policies. The company has not commented on the reports of users being banned for being left-leaning or right-leaning, but it has said that the policies of Parler are consistent with those of other social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. It has been described as a free speech alternative to mainstream social media networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. The service was founded by John Matze and Jared Thomson, who are alumni of the University of Denver computer science program. Matze is the company’s chief executive officer and Thomson serves as the chief technology officer.

It was initially intended to be bipartisan, but they had focused their marketing efforts toward conservatives as they began to embrace the service. In May, Twitter sparked outrage among President Trump and his supporters when it flagged some of the president’s tweets about mail-in ballots as \”potentially misleading\”, and a tweet regarding the George Floyd protests as \”glorifying violence\”. In response, the company published a ‘Declaration of Internet Independence’ modeled after the United States Declaration of Independence, and began using the #Twexit hashtag. The campaign encouraged Twitter users to migrate to Parler. On June 19, Katie Hopkins was permanently suspended from Twitter for violating their policies on their “hateful conduct” account falsely claiming they had collected money to donate to Black Lives Matter groups. A Twitter account affiliating itself with the hacktivist group Anonymous claimed they would donate the money to the Black Lives Matters group. After collecting the money, the account was quickly verified by Parler and claimed responsibility for the impostor’s imposture. The account was later removed by the group, which claimed it had collected the money for a lawsuit against Twitter over the ban, but Parler claimed it was not responsible for the impersonator. In August 2018, the firm announced that it had raised more than $1 million in funding for a new project to fight back against the “Tech Tyrants’” of Twitter and Facebook. In November 2018, it announced that they had raised $1.2 million in seed funding for the project.