Parler has been touted for weeks as the censorship free version of Twitter. Now, it seems that Parler is also banning people who are flocking back to Twitter.
A number of Conservatives are still under the belief that free speech also means being free of the consequences of their speech everywhere they go. After a number of them were cited for rule violations over harassment and racism, some began openly demanding that an alternative be set up so they can say whatever they want. Then, along came Parler and it wound up being touted as the “censorship free” alternative to Twitter.
Late last month and this month, high ranking conservatives began touting this alternative including prominent Republican’s and Trump administration officials. From Business Insider:
Top Republicans and Trump campaign officials are hyping a social network that prides itself on free speech as an alternative to big platforms that consider to be censoring the president and right-wing voices.
Conservative Twitter is being flooded with links to Parler, a platform calling itself a “non-biased free speech driven entity” that has seen more than 100,000 US downloads in the last week alone, according to app analytics data provided to Business Insider. Parler’s popularity surge comes as the Trump campaign reportedly weighs alternatives to Twitter and Facebook for reaching supporters just four months before the presidential election.
Figures like Eric Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump lawyer Rudy Guliani, and far-right personality Laura Loomer — who is banned from several major tech platforms — all have accounts on Parler. Dozens more Republican personalities are also encouraging their Twitter followings to abandon ship and follow them to a network they say is free from big tech’s speech policing. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Parler cofounder John Matze said, “It is not Parler’s job to weigh in on political matters. We believe in free speech and fair elections. Period.”
Some Republican’s even went so far as to say that Twitter’s days were “numbered”. This, of course, was late last month. What about now? Well, we checked in on how the exodus is going. It turns out, it’s not going all that well. It seems that Parler had to institute some basic rules and enforcement after things got, well, vile. From IFLScience:
It turns out it might not be the free-for-all Wild West promised, however, with many people reporting that they’d been banned by the platform already.
It would appear there are in fact rules, and moderators to enforce them, just like every other social media platform out there.
As well as people being banned for apparently being a bit left-wing (so much for free speech), the CEO of Parler has gone into some more detail of what can earn you a silencing. And oh boy, they are quite something.
This is how the Parler CEO describes their content policies pic.twitter.com/fiPnNCpxgd
— Cristiano Lima (@viaCristiano) June 30, 2020
The insinuation here is that bans started getting handed out when people started sending pictures of their feces to people they disagree with. There were also instances of adult themed names, pornography, and death threats. Hope you didn’t think it was an exaggeration on our part when we say that some of the stuff being posted by them is vile.
Apparently, conservatives then found themselves flocking ironically back to Twitter to complain that they’ve been silenced and how Parler isn’t about free speech after all. Other’s were complaining about censorship as well.
Really, this was one of the two most logical scenarios to come of all of this. Either the people running Parler are going to be horrified what is being posted and begin handing out bans or the people running Parler will not car and allow their site to quickly deteriorate into a cesspool of the worst humanity has to offer. In this case, the people running Parler are leaning towards the former. As a result, conservatives are seeing that, even on Parler, there are consequences to their “free speech”.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
