One Defector-Proof Hangout for Trumpists Will Likely Be Parler [View all]

[ancianita]

The Mercer Family might have abandoned Trump and Bannon, but they will maintain whatever fears, hates, conspiracies and twisted populism they paid for in Trump days, and smear Democrats as long as they get a return on their investments.

One being the two year-old Parler platform, where Trumpers, part but not all of the 22% of America (based on total Trump votes divided by total US population), are settling into a new hot box of mutual validation.

Parler is a "free speech" platform, and its surging popularity appears to be an intended consequence of Facebook and Twitter cracking down on hate speech, violent rhetoric and misinformation.
According to ABC News, the Parler app saw over 3.5 million active users last week and has nearly 8 million users total.
Hashtags that often trend on the platform include #freemarket, #voterfraud, and #Tucker (as in Carlson); the same ones that can often be found on President Trump's Twitter feed.
Posts — known on the platform as "Parleys" — from far-right pundits like Sean Hannity easily and frequently get over one million views. If a right-wing figure's tweet is flagged by Twitter, you can likely find it on Parler.

Parler was founded in 2018 by two computer programmers named John Matze and Jared Thomson, and is financially backed by Rebekah Mercer, whose father is Robert Mercer. Robert Mercer is the co-founder of Cambridge Analytica and a hedge fund manager. He's also a major funder of Breitbart. According to the Wall Street Journal, sources said Parler was "a Mercer family investment."

Recently, Rebekah Mercer emphasized that Parler is a platform for "free speech."

"John and I started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech, as our founders intended, and also to create a social media environment that would protect data privacy," Mercer said in a Parler post. "The ever-increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords demands that someone lead the fight against data mining, and for the protection of free speech online. That someone is Parler, a beacon to all who value their liberty, free speech and personal privacy."

Parler has become a far-right echo chamber, giving people who are living in Trump's alternate reality a place to organize. And that's dangerous, as Ciarán O'Connor, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, told VICE News.

"The risk in a mass migration to smaller, fringe platforms is that they do not enforce the same guidelines as older, more established platforms, meaning there is potential for not only echo chambers to form, but for extremist groups to make use of these spaces to organize offline activity or to promote more extreme material and beliefs than they might on larger platforms," O'Connor said.

https://www.salon.com/2020/11/20/inside-parler-the-social-media-platform-by-and-for-trump-supporters/

More: https://theconversation.com/parler-what-you-need-to-know-about-the-free-speech-twitter-alternative-142268

The Mercers expand where the Koch Bros. haven't gone and it's still not cool.