Conservative-Leaning Social Media Site ‘Parler’ Seeing Massive Surge of New Users, Although Questions Remain

Over the last week, little-known social media site ‘Parler’ has seen enormous growth from approximately 1 million users, to 1.5 million. 

For comparison, Twitter has about 330 million active users. However, in the process of rapidly gaining these new 500,000 users, Parler displaced Twitter in the Apple app store under the ‘News’ category. 

Twitter is comparatively small for a social media platform, so by taking this fact into consideration, Parler still has a long road ahead if it is looking to become a true competitor on par with Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube, among others. 

However, the Parler story this week really demonstrates the clear momentum it has been getting. 

Parler was actually founded back in 2018, but it has only truly caught fire now as ‘mainstream social media companies’ have taken a lot of flak for left-wing and anti-conservative biases. 

The idea of left-wing bias in social media isn’t new, but has gained recent notoriety in the news as Donald Trump’s Twitter page has begun being partially censored in some cases by Twitter itself. 

On this same note, Donald Trump’s official Twitch account was banned off the platform last week. In that same time frame, other platforms began implementing similar measures. This last week saw YouTube begin a purge against its high profile right-leaning accounts, and the platforming site Reddit banned its biggest community devoted to President Trump (a ‘subreddit’ known as The_Donald) as part of an overhaul of its ‘hate speech policies.’

Although it is disputed by many in the mainstream media, it has been proven factually that most of the California-based social media giants are biased against conservative voices. 

Given this situation, we find enough banned and disillusioned right-leaning users swirling around in the Internet that a significant niche for a site like Parler has been carved out. 

Parler has successfully branded itself as a haven for conservatives, and much of the push towards the platform comes from the aforementioned spat between President Trump and platforms like Twitter and Twitch.

Trump’s campaign manager Brad Parscale has had an account with Parler almost since the beginning. However, his decision to pivot and set up the ‘Team Trump’ Parler page for Trump’s 2020 reelection, alongside support fromh numerous other conservative figures in the U.S. and Britain, are what allowed the dynamic and sudden growth Parler experienced in the last week to occur.

Some of the big name conservatives currently on Parler are: 

• Dan Bongino 

• Eric Trump

• Laura Loomer

• Rudy Giuliani

• Sen. Rand Paul 

• ex-congressman Ron Paul

• Zero Hedge (magazine)

• Senator Ted Cruz 

• The Epoch Times (magazine)

• Mike Cernovich 

• The Federalist (magazine)

• Candace Owens 

• Alex Jones 

• Infowars (news site)

• James Woods (right-leaning actor)

• The National Telegraph (yes, follow us on Parler if you have an account!)

Some of these users have been banned from many of the other major platforms, whereas others are transitioning to Parler from Twitter or other platforms for moral reasons without ever having being banned. In this regard, the Parler experiment should be considered a success already: if these people were not allowed a voice online before, this must be seen as an unequivocal good if you believe in freedom of speech. 

Of course, the Parler story isn’t all roses and daisies. 

While the site’s CEO has stated on record that Parler does not censor, it seems the site is already making moves to ban people for so-called obscene content; a ironic step in the direction of censorship, given the user base on the site. 

And it doesn’t stop there. There are indeed limited reports that both right and left-wing political content is getting users banned. 

We should be on the lookout for signs that Parler may be going down the same path as the other California social media ‘bigs.’ 

However, it’s also important to consider that the Parler team is under a ton of pressure; while the site is highly functional and a satisfying experience, the massive influx of users may be putting a strain on their infrastructure.  While we all want more free speech, we should take a second to consider the extreme anti-conservative political climate we are in currently.

No better example of this social anti-conservative bias was on the partial take-down of Gab.com, another free speech-centric social media site with a right leaning user base, founded in 2017.

Gab came under heavy media scrutiny after the October 2018 Pittsburgh synagogue shooter was found to have posted about his intent to commit the shooting beforehand on the platform.

Was Gab.com responsible for the shooting? Of course not. No one is realistically arguing that. However, what if Gab had done a better job moderating content—perhaps contacting police with the information posted on the site, thereby preventing the shooting from taking place altogether? 

This seems to be the standard social media companies are being held to these days. And so, after succumbing to media pressure, Gab’s web hosting provider dropped its service, causing the platform to be disabled for a short time. 

Gab is now back and accessible, but its public image has never truly recovered: it is now seen by many as a fringe corner of the Internet. 

With this in mind, Parler’s CEO John Matze knows he is walking a tightrope: on the one hand. Parler must satisfy what his user base wants: freedom of speech.

On the other hand, Parler has to prove what Gab.com could not, which is to be able to monitor user’s posts to the degree that they can track potentially violent threats.

While seemingly not needing to go as far as censorship, this is indeed a tightrope. If Parler can’t walk it, they risk falling to the same fate as Gab. 

In any case, while users should continue to put pressure on Parler for more speech rights, at this early stage of expansion, we should probably expect the site to be making a few mistakes as they attempt to make their way up to the ‘big kids table.’