Parler Is Over The Target – Catching Flak From Mainstream Media And Twitter Trolls
We’re still on Twitter and Facebook, but those are our past. Parler, and MeWe, and other emerging platforms are our future. Conservatives having an option is what the mainstream media and Twitter blue checks cannot stand.
Have you noticed? The mainstream media is obsessed with Parler. Obsessed with trying to marginalize Parler, to be more precise.
Just in the past week there have been several articles in major publications trying to portray Parler as a home of the dangerous fringe of conspiracy theorists. That’s pretty ironic, since the platform these articles defend, Twitter, is a cesspool of anti-Trump conspiracy theories and has been for 4 years.
Nothingburger people who shout “traitor” on Twitter gain hundreds of thousands of followers, and previously lucid people like Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe have gone off the deep end for followers and RTs. Meanwhile, blue check journalists pat each other on the back for the latest fake anti-Trump scoop based on anonymous sources.
Yet marginalizing Parler is the goal, much as the way the media tried to marginalize the Tea Party.
Politico wrote:
Since the election, President Donald Trump and his allies have faced fact-checks, condemnation and restrictions when trying to spread inconclusive evidence of voter fraud and leftist violence on social media.
But over on Parler, there’s a new, millions-strong MAGA universe where conservatives are freely spreading these claims and reinforcing their belief that Democrats have stolen the election from Trump.
Hashtags on Parler denoting Trump’s favorite conspiracy theories — #Dominion, #Sharpiegate, #QAnon — trend freely, without the restrictions Twitter and Facebook have instituted to suppress them. Stories from fringe sites pushing baseless allegations of voter fraud are not flagged as disinformation, as they often are elsewhere. Videos from the Million MAGA March depicting heated confrontations between MAGA supporters, counterprotesters and D.C. police are shared as evidence of rampant antifa violence, omitting necessary context that would show otherwise.
Yeah, and on Twitter the Iranian Supreme Leader threatens to destroy Israel.
The Atlantic claimed Right-Wing Social Media Finalizes Its Divorce From Reality:
On the social-media app Parler, which has been gaining popularity among supporters of President Donald Trump, posts alleging electoral irregularities mixed with assorted hashtags decrying Fox itself: #BOYCOTTFOXNEWS, #DUMPFOXNEWS, #FAKEFOXNEWS, #FOXNEWSISDEAD, and #FOXNEWSSUCKS. Throughout Election Day, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube had been cracking down on a flurry of allegations about voter fraud in Arizona; the platforms quickly applied warning labels to new posts containing false or disputed information and reduced the distribution of groups spreading them. In response, pro-Trump influencers exhorted their followers to congregate on Parler, which tells users to “speak freely and express yourself openly, without fear of being ‘deplatformed’ for your views.”
Sheera Frenkel at the NY Times ran a hit piece on Dan Bongino, an investor in and the public face of Parler, listing him as a “misinformation Superspreader“. That’s also ironic, since the Times was a superspreader of Russia Collusion misinformation:
The NY Times was a superspreader of Trump-Russia collusion misinformation, and social media giants did nothing to stop it. https://t.co/EUFjLE7emO
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) November 24, 2020
And I remember when Frenkel, prior to her NY Times days, tried to spread the misinformation that Hamas was not really responsible for the kidnapping of three Israeli teens just before the 2014 Gaza war, even after Hamas claimed responsibility!
The Washington Post mocked the fact that many of the people who established large Parler followings continue to use their Twitter accounts. Well, duh, moving to Parler for many people and websites is a chance to establish an additional channel to reach people, not necessarily the exclusive channel for doing so. It’s also an insurance policy against being banned or locked at Twitter.
On Twitter, the loons spread a claim that Parler was hacked, and Twitter obediently made the hashtag trend. Liberals were ecstatic that Parler had been hacked and that private Direct Messages of conservatives would be published — but it was all fake. There was no hack.
NBC News also is obsessed:
NBC News' YouTube live feed isn't airing exclusive Joe Biden interview. Instead, they're airing a Skype interview about Parler pic.twitter.com/Msfd0iOQh8
— Steven Nelson (@stevennelson10) November 24, 2020
What is going on?
Parler is over the target, and catching flak.
It is not yet, and may never be, the news influencer that Twitter is. Twitter is more the public square, which is why its blatant censorship is so politically damaging. Parler is more a place where conservatives can have an uncensored voice and reach other conservatives.
That’s certainly the case for Legal Insurrection. In just a few months on Parler, our following is 265,000, and growing daily. By contrast, after a decade on Twitter, we can’t break the 40k barrier — maybe if we screamed “traitor” and “Trump is worse than Hitler!” more often, Twitter would show our tweets to more people. As of now, we tweet into the darkness, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
Our engagement — the number of people who interact with our posts on Parler, is through the roof. It now is a major driver of traffic, unlike Twitter which is almost non-existent, and Facebook which has been good in the past but now must have us on some sort of throttle. Our “reach” at Facebook is down significantly, without any reported violations. That may be a result of Facebook deciding to favor large platforms like the NY Times.
We’re still on Twitter and Facebook, but those are our past. Parler, and MeWe, and other emerging platforms are our future. A future in which we just can’t risk being held hostage to internet thugs and autocrats; we need an escape plan, and we’re not waiting to be banned to implement the plan.
Conservatives having an option is what Politico, The Atlantic, The NY Times, NBC News, and Twitter loons cannot stand.
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Comments
“Come into my Parler,” said the MAGA spider to the Communist flies…….
Ironically, Parler would let the flies post freely (unless they’re posting porn, threats of violence or using the medium for illegal activities).
The problem the flies have, is that Parler is truly neutral – they have to stand or fall on their own merits. They don’t have those who operate the medium reinforcing their One and Only True Way All Good People Think.
Trump supporters are about half the population, Twitter, Facebook, Google, Amazon and most media are facing a 50% or so decline.
By moving away from them, we can cause a staggering financial loss.
Think it’s more like 60 % now.
In swing states our President was pulling 20 % of the black vote.
No way in Democrat Party Hell that our President lost with that many blacks pulling their votes out from under Biden.
NYT??????
OH OH…..
The NY Times Supported Stalin & Communism As The Way To The Future
The New York Times cheered Stalin and constantly reported that this was the way to the future.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/armstrong-ny-times-supported-stalin-communism-way-future
Bet these are trending….but not on Schwitter…..
Carter Page Sues
Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, DOJ and Others Behind FISA Abuse for $75 Million
Gateway Pundit
JUST IN: Arizona State Legislature to Hold Public Hearing on Election Integrity on Monday, Nov. 30
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/11/just-arizona-state-legislature-hold-public-hearing-election-integrity-monday-nov-30/
Parler Free Speech Social Network
Search domain parler.comhttps://parler.com
Parler is an unbiased social media focused on real user experiences and engagement. Free expression without violence and no censorship. Parler never shares your personal data.
Social media is not healthy for humans, and should be used sparingly, but then there’s reality.
Will Twitter make membership in Parler a bannable offense?
They can’t ban you, if you delete your account. Which I did, a week or two ago, a few weeks after I set up my Parler account.
While there is a risk of ceding the public square to the Twits by doing so, I am not inclined to interact within a rigged medium … much the same reason I’m a support-the-man-not-the-party political independent.
Words I look forward to hearing:
“I’m Donald Trump, and I’d like to thank the American people for re-electing me. You can now follow me, EXCLUSIVELY, on Parler.”
“Will Twitter make membership in Parler a bannable offense?”
I hope so, they are so arrogant and shortsighted they do not understand what is happening. People are fed up.
I’ve had, and deleted, accounts on both Twitter and Facebook. Having done without them before they existed, and done without them again since I ditched them, I have a hard time talking myself into signing up for alternatives.
To be fair, I have a low opinion of most opinions, and that’s pretty much all social media, or for that matter any media anymore, trade in.
It’s a shame it took conservatives so long to recognize and come to terms with the obvious reality that trusting your communications to enemy channels is not a sound business plan.
Very unfair Parler is making waves, when Gab.com has been out there for what? 4 years? 5 years?
Because some crazy posted on it…. FB and ALL the rest have had murderers post on their sites…. Yet no black mark.
Anyway, Parler is getting all the somebodys in RightWorld, but Gab has been through the fire of being denied every service a website requires, and find ways around the denials.
Parler isn’t hardened. Also, Gab’s site is much more functional: easier to read text, it doesn’t scroll back to the top when you repost an item or comment on an item, it has shortcuts which are super handy, etc.
I’m on Gab and Parler; far and away more on Gab because the interface is superior and the founder is dedicated to being deplatform-proofed.
Unfortunately, Milo left and went to Parler. I understand, but still.
I think that it’s just a timing and luck issue. It doesn’t hurt that Dan Bongino is involved with Parler, either. But mostly . . . when Gab first hit the scene, a lot of people on the right were still in a sort of wonderment of denial that Twitter would ever get as bold as it has in not just shadowbanning conservative accounts but in flagging the President of the United States’ tweets and literally choking the sharing of actual mainstream news items that show Dems in a bad light. We all knew in our heads it could come, but I don’t think everyone really believed it until it happened.
Because of that, Gab kind of got the short shrift in terms of users because it seemed like all the “conspiracy theorists” (some of whom turned out to be right) flocked there. It didn’t help that in the earlier days they foregrounded the “hot” topics . . . which at the time included such items as how much Israel sucks and Jews should die. It really did end up being the refuge of the haters (actual racists, not those who disagree with Democrat policy; actual anti-Semites, who are free to think what they want but are a vile, disgusting group deserving of our enduring disdain; actual conspiracy nutters, among them those who think reptilian aliens are conspiring with the government to turn humans into insect hybrids . .. or whatever.).
So, as you note, no “somebodys in RightWorld” plus a collection of seemingly fringe people tilting at windmills (that, at least in terms of leftist Big Tech censorship, turned out to be more) plus hitting the scene too soon (too many on the right and center-right still in a form of denial) plus the star power of Dan Bongino working for Parler, and Gab really didn’t stand a chance.
That said, who knows what the future holds? As you note, Gab has had to deal with deplatforming and demonetizing and still survives, so it’s well-situated to be a landing zone if other venues fail to adapt or forestall similar (or exactly the same) tactics.
One advantage of having Gab and Parler is that it presents TWO targets instead of one for the Left. The Alinsky tactic of “pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it” becomes harder if there is more that one.
Fuzzy, The timing did have quite a bit to do with the situation for Gab. With regard to what you described as nutters, whenever someone presents himself and is found annoying, I hit the button to block them. As a result I don’t see much of what you have described by way of odd ball opinions, because I have filtered those folks out.
The CEO of Gab said they are working on a YouTube alternative, which would be great. Bitchute is not quite what I’m looking for, although I did enjoy watching a movie on it last night, “Logan‘s run.“. It came out in 1976 and I was a little busy that year.
Gab does have Cheryl Atkisson (spelling?), Laura Loomer, Roger Stone and others on its platform.
I’ve kind of thought the same thing. As Fuzzy says below, the number of antisemitic posters makes it feel uncomfortable, but that is what free speech is all about. How do you deal with a problem if you don’t know it’s there?
I signed up with Gab about 2-3 years ago, and the very first thing I saw was a bunch of neo-nazi shite. I deleted my account immediately.
I signed up with Parler when it started, but I hardly ever use it.
I stopped using Twitter long before most people even started on it — when I signed up for Twitter it was a place where you could post where you were going for lunch, so any friends who happened to be in the area might join you. By the time it turned into a blogging platform I had found it annoying and stopped using it. And when it signed up that #GamerGate nutcase to censor it, I deleted my account. So although I now have a Parler account I don’t really have any use for it.
As for Facebook, I need an account there because there are people who only contact me that way, and one person who insists on using its messenger video call feature to call me. But other than that I don’t use it.
We’re so glad we have this scintillating detailed account of your social media use and how “ahead of the curve” you were when it came to certain platforms. This report is almost as fascinating as your MENSA experience.
Why does power corrupt?
For your consideration…..
“John Hayward on our loathsome elites [Buck Throckmorton]
This is a great essay tweeted out by John Hayward about our loathsome elites.
Privileged elites always want to assert their status by indulging in pleasures denied to the lower classes. This often leads them into immoral, deranged, and even criminal behavior. They’re desperate to flaunt their power by doing what lesser folk are forbidden to do.
This is one of the reasons for the wave of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and pedophilia among the richest and most powerful. They indulge increasingly depraved appetites to savor the sweet, sweet high of doing what ordinary people cannot, feasting on the food of the gods.
It’s also one of the reasons high-living elites are drawn to puritanical secular pseudo-religions, like the Church of Global Warming and now the Church of Covid. They have a deep appetite for making aspects of modern life forbidden to the Little People, but not to themselves.
You’ll notice that high acolytes of the Church of Global Warming have absolutely no intention of compromising THEIR extravagant lifestyles. They jet set, they have yachts and huge cars, they buy beachfront mansions on property they claim to believe will be underwater soon.
But they have a deep desire to make planes, cars, and accoutrements of the First World lifestyle forbidden to the proletariat. They love how their ideology elevates them into a superior overclass, reaffirming their importance by asserting they “need” or “deserve” so much more.
These elite appetites are useful to the Left because they fold neatly into its endless war against the hated middle class. The perversions of the elite inspire them to attack the morality that would otherwise help lower and middle class people improve their station in life.
Meanwhile, the fanatical puritan and luddite ideologies of the elite inspire them to restrict the resources and technologies that improve middle-class life and help people become more productive, which helps them earn more money and amass more capital.
Thus we have a culture that teaches young people to reject time-tested moral codes that would help them build better lives, instead making clumsy efforts to imitate the debauchery of the elites in ways that lead them to misery and ruin.
And our young people are taught to hate their own ambitions, to hate themselves for desiring lives that have big carbon footprints, to hate and distrust everything that could bring them prosperity and narrow the gap between their lifestyles and those of the elite.
Take a broad look at pop culture, political culture, and increasingly corporate culture as we head into 2021. Almost every bit of it has been crafted to make middle class people abandon their ambitions and program their children to fail… making Mount Olympus ever higher.
And then the political elite will demand even more control over our lives, to “fix” the ever-widening “inequality” gap their own policies and cultural programming made worse!
It’s no wonder that some who dwell on the highest slopes of Mount Olympus are tempted to go even further, to indulge in dark appetites that would land lesser men in jail – a temptation that seems especially acute for male members of the extreme upper class.
They reach for the fruit that no other hand could pick, to remind one another that they are gods, even while loudly posturing as champions of socialism, feminism, and the Little Guy. The difference between what they DO and what they SAY is part of the rush…..”
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=391456
Great essay, wrong link.
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=391452
It’s nice that there are emerging competitors to Twitter. Competition has a way of forcing companies to absorb and internalize the economic costs of their decisions.
FB, IMO, should be the next target. Simply require that all Federal department and agencies must have a link to an equivalent site if they utilize a FB page from their own website homepage.
Then the same for all entities that accept federal taxpayer dollars. So every level of government and nearly all public corporations would be required to also utilize and prominently place the competition.
We all know that, despite FB vigorous claims, there isn’t any true competitor in the same space as FB. This simple course allows for the growth and development of one or more true competitor.
How many people only use FB because they don’t have any alternative from their employer or the companies you want to do business with or the government entity you are trying to access?
FB can’t have any reasonable objection to this. They say competition exists. Govt is supposed to use multiple vendors, not exclusive vendors; why is FB any different in this regard?
Being linked and sometimes featured on Rantingly.com can’t be hurting LI’s growth on Parler either. Slowly at first but now rapidly accelerating open journalism on the web. Eventually, Google’s stranglehold on web searches is going to get broken up.
The Politico story lays out the case why Twitter and Facebook should lose any section 230 protections
“faced fact-checks, condemnation and restrictions when trying to spread inconclusive evidence”
You can’t have it both ways.
On another front, My Space faded away, the same could happen to the others, even with all the money behind them.
What do you mean “you can’t have it both ways”? What two ways can’t you have it? § 230 was never intended to require political neutrality. This forum we are using right now could not exist without § 230’s protections; if § 230 were repealed Prof J would have to close it down. And yet it does not even pretend to be politically neutral, and nor should it.
Conspiracy theories have always been a dime a dozen on the internet. Most get ignored by the powers that be.
When they start getting bothered about a particular “conspiracy theory”, its probably because it hits too close to home
Abysmal interface, must give mobile number for DM function, serious liability problems with terms of usage. We can do better than this. Shame that so many are going to Parlor, when Gab is better.
Parlor’s ToS are too overreaching. Why does Parlor need my cell number?
Of all the times a gun could backfire, if only it did during the taking of that photo at the top.
“Obsessed with trying to marginalize Parler, to be more precise.”
FOX News, Sinclair, AON, NewsMax, etc. – and now Parler. Totalitarians have always sought to control free flow information. They aggressively demonize enemies and repress truth to maintain control. We used to watch it from afar in brutal dictatorships across the world. Now, it’s within our gates. Dorsey, Zuckerberg, et al are simply high tech versions of this totalitarianism – with blessings from impotent Congress that refuses to remove section 230 government protections from these high tech totalitarians.
Parler and MeWe are a good start, but much more work needs to be done in terms of setting up not only independent platforms, but independent payment and funding sites as alternatives to PayPal and GoFundMe as well.
If we don’t do this then the day may yet come when one’s employment, credit, bank account, mortgage, and possibly even utility services and health care, will be contingent on one’s adherence to a “woke” ideology. Things will get quite unpleasant then.
Not a word about the ADL, smearing Parler.
Parler is a haven for extremists, ADL says | Fortune
https://fortune.com/2020/11/13/parler-extremism-hate-conspiracy-theories-qanon-social-media-adl/
Parler: Where the Mainstream Mingles with the Extreme | Anti-Defamation League
https://www.adl.org/blog/parler-where-the-mainstream-mingles-with-the-extreme?s=09
Twitter is more the public square, which is why its blatant censorship is so politically damaging.
Oh FFS, no it is not, and you are smarter than this. I expect this kind of asinine bleating from the sub-editors and commenters, but a Cornell law professor calling a privately owned electronic messaging service “the public square” is credibility self-immolation.
daniel,
Ok. Let’s say that Twitter isn’t a ‘public square’ instead, as you say, it’s a ‘private square’. Fine. Now the question becomes is Twitter so ubiquitous and necessary for amplification of one’s message or product/service that it has become a digital age public accommodation?
Certainly the inability to utilize Twitter would disadvantage a message and it’s messenger.
Daniel, I don’t think the term “public square” is itself a legal term. It’s a functional term, and for the moment Twitter and Facebook do perform that function.
Also, in several states the judiciary has declared that privately owned shopping malls that function in modern society as “town squares” are therefore public forums and bound by the first amendment. I disagree with those decisions, and think they violate the fifth amendment, but in those states that is the actual law. You build a mall on your own land, with your own money, you invite the public to come there as your guests, and suddenly the courts say you can’t make the rules. You have to allow people to leaflet and propagandize on your property for causes that disgust you. So even as a legal term Prof J isn’t off base.
If the “fringe conspiracy theories” on Parler are false, surely it would be easy to prove that?
Skip the flack and go directly to Gab. It’s already been through the “right-wing-racists” wringer and refused to compromise, as Parler likely will.
Free speech for all.
The problem is that Gab seems to be infested by actual racists.
Why not just block them and be done with it?