THREAD: I’ve done a little research into the social network Parler, so you don’t have to 👍
With Katie Hopkins’ permanent suspension from Twitter and the Forbury Gardens stabbings over the last 3 days, the social app Parler is suddenly in the news as many users (mostly supporters of far-right policies and ‘free speech’) abandon Twitter as part of the #Twexit movement
If you’d never heard of Parler before this weekend, you’re in good company. I’m a professional social media manager and I hadn’t heard of it either. So, being the good slacktivist that I am, I thought I’d venture beyond the Twitter conversation and conduct a little desk research
Founded in mid-2018, Parler is essentially a Twitter clone that positions itself as “unbiased social media”, as its Apple App Store listing indicates ... 
Although it’s perhaps fairer to say that ‘inboased’ really means ‘unmoderated’, as its Wikipedia entry below suggests. In-app, it states only that its community guidelines require users to adhere to local norms. Your guess is as good as mine what that means in reality
Delve a little further into the app and who do you find at the top of its list of recommended news sources to follow? Only Breitbart News, the extreme right-wing platform run by Steve Bannon. Not CNN or NBC or even Fox News - Breitbart. Decide for yourself how ‘unbiased’ that is
Recent news reports say that Parler claims to have “over 1 million users”. A couple of things to note here. Firstly, Twitter has 330m monthly ‘active’ users worldwide - people who use the app at least once a month. Facebook has over 2.6 billion MAUs - that’s 2,600 times as many
I note Twitter took a similar length of time to Parler to reach 1m MAUs - but it is potentially *very* misleading to equate the two numbers. “Over 1m users” could include all users, including inactive accounts or even people who downloaded the app but never actually signed up
Based on what I could Google, Twitter achieved 1m downloads around 9 months after launch - much faster than Parler. And this was in 2006-7, at a time when social media was new, smartphones were only just being launched and even Facebook was still relatively tiny compared to today
So how busy is Parler? As a test, I searched for #ForburyGardens on the app and found 47 posts in total. There have been more mentions on Twitter since I went to bed last night, on top of the thousands that were posted on Sat night/Sunday morning. So, not that busy, really
So who are these 1m users? It’s hard to say. But you may have seen screenshots posted by others of users’ ‘parleys’ (tweets) which suggest there is no shortage of far-right political leanings. And while that is, of course, a selective view, here’s what Wikipedia has to say
I’ve seen many complaints from political conservatives that Twitter is basically just a liberals’ paradise. And while I’d say there’s truth in the accusation that Twitter has a left-leaning user base ...
... I’d also say that citing Twitter being a ‘left-wing echo chamber’ as a reason to join an arguably more extreme right-wing echo chamber doesn’t really stand up to much scrutiny
A quick aside about Parler’s credibility and governance. Several users quickly seized on Hopkins’ Twitter expulsion to set up accounts pretending to be her. One of them even was even given the equivalent of Twitter’s blue tick, supposedly a sign of verified authenticity ...
... That account has apparently successfully scammed several users into making donations, supposedly to fund legal action. Parler has confirmed this is a fake. Now, while scammers exist everywhere and any network can make an error like this, it’s embarrassing to say the least
One final point - just thinking aloud, really. Assuming there’s a higher than average proportion of far-right, anti-EU folks on Parler, I wonder how many pronounce its name ‘Parl-UR’ rather than ‘Parl-EH’? It’s from the French, meaning ‘to speak’. Anyhow, that’s my lot ~END~
@threadreaderapp Unroll, please 👍
