US: Trump fans choose Parler over Twitter
Since the social platforms Twitter and Facebook
started warning users that information might be untrue, millions of
right-wing Trump fans have flocked to Parler. The app claims to
allow free speech.
“Welcome patriots to the last beacon of freedom on the web! Glad
to have you,” is how Republican congressman Devin Nunes greets his
new followers on Parler.
What’s that, you say? Well, it’s a bit like Twitter, a bit like
Facebook, a bit like Reddit. Users have a timeline on which they
can post pictures, videos and up to 1,000 characters. And there is
no censorship. They can post whatever they like, whether it is true
or false, whether or not it incites hate.
There are no warning labels, such as those recently used by
Twitter to caution that US President Donald Trump’s tweets
regarding the election results might be misleading. Parler founder
and CEO John Matze told US TV channel Fox News in the summer that
his app would not fact-check and this week he said that Twitter’s
use of warning labels on Trump’s tweets were “pretty
ludicrous.”
Parler’s guidelines state: “We prefer to leave decisions about
what is seen and who is heard to each individual. In no case will
Parler decide what content will be removed or filtered, or whose
account will be removed, on the basis of the opinion expressed
within the content at issue.”
Top of the app charts
This approach has attracted a significant number of radical
right supporters. And the number of users has rocketed since TV
networks announced that Joe Biden had won the US election. Matze
told the Parler community that the app had acquired 4.5 million new
users in just five days. On Wednesday in the US, Parler was the
most downloaded free app on Google Play and the Mac App Store.
Nunes, one of Trump’s most loyal supporters in Congress, now has
1.7 million followers, whereas on Twitter, he only has 1.2 million.
He used both platforms to suggest that US postal service managers
in Erie, Pennsylvania had instructed their staff to backdate
ballots. Twitter warned that this information was controversial,
but Parler let it be.
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Like Twitter and Facebook, Parler also suggests friends for its
users. At the moment, this reads a little like a “Who’s Who” of the
radical right in the US. “They don’t see a future for themselves on
the major platforms where they believe that they are censored,”
explained Miro Dittrich, an expert on far-right extremism at the
Amadeu Antonio Foundation in Berlin.
However, he explained that Facebook remained the platform with
the most radical right content. “Of course, since 2016 we have seen
that platforms have become more aware of their responsibility and
are now enforcing stricter community standards,” he told DW. “That
means that incitement to violence and racism are deleted because
they clearly violate community standards. They don’t like that of
course.”
Parler has attracted racists, Holocaust-deniers and QAnon
believers, who think that Satanist pedophiles have infiltrated the
media and politics. “Misinformation has given rise to another view
of the world,” explained Dittrich. “So, people are living in
alternative realities, in which political foes are demonized as
much as possible,” and where people speak of the coming apocalypse.
“This creates a pressure to act. And unfortunately, we’re seeing
that this pressure sometimes transforms into violence in the
offline world,” Dittrich says.
Technical glitches
In technical terms, Parler seems to still have a few glitches
but CEO Matze warned new users that the problems were
temporary.
Parler aims to program as much of its own code as possible in
order to be independent of Silicon Valley. But the code is flawed:
Whatever users search for, whether QAnon or Trump2020, they are
currently flooded with links to nude pictures.
QAnon: How dangerous are conspiracy theories?
The algorithms apparently cannot filter commercials for
pornography, which is banned on Parler, freedom of speech or not.
Advertising for the consumption of marijuana, slander and death
threats are also banned, according to the community standards.
Matze has also told users that pictures of “fecal matter” will not
be tolerated. The platform has already deleted a number of
satirical accounts.
Miro Dittrich doubted that Parler would enjoy long-term success
and predicted that it would likely go the same route as Gab,
another social network that attracts far-right users but whose
influence has waned.
He said that platforms that speak to a specific, homogeneous
audience were rarely successful. “The idea is to harass people and
get at your opponents. That’s a large part of what motivates this
faction to be active on social media.” He thinks that eventually
most Parler users will return to Twitter.
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