Parler App: revolutionizing free speech on social media

Tiana Meador

Last month, the infamous conservative commentator, YouTuber, and conservative comedian, Hunter Avallone promoted his Parler account on his Instagram. The post, garnering over 3,000 likes now stands as one of Parler’s pinned promotions, truly showing the freedom their users can enjoy.

The Parler App is not your typical regulatory-friendly, slanted media source such as Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram. It is media with a twist- a First Amendment friendly one. Something that many users tend to miss out on is the ability to have a moderated discussion, opening up doors for healthy discourse- and a decrease in polarization. Parler swears to prevent these polarized mishaps that happen often on their competitor’s interfaces. 

“Parler supports free expression about articles and content online. We help publishers and bloggers efficiently moderate communities and improve reader engagement,” says the Parler website.

The app is in a state of rapid growth. Since its release three months ago, the app had a slow startup. However, last moth, buzz on its doppelganger competitor’s platform, Twitter, prompted an overnight flock of conservatives to the app that had the company scrambling to keep up with account verification processes. Some of the first new wave of users included Candace Owens, Director for Turning Point USA Communications and Ryan Fournier, National Chair of Students for Trump.

Most of the new users were victims of Twitter’s favorite regulatory process, account suspension and/or reinstatement. 

Avallone himself has already used the interface to share his controversial stances, which would traditionally gain him animadversion on Twitter. Sharing one of Vox’s more recent, almost comedic headlines, PewDiePie’s [Felix Kjellberg] ties to white supremacy spell serious trouble for the future of YouTube, he said, “What does ties to white supremacy even mean? The cucks at Vox are so desperate lol.”

Although historically the credibility of Vox has been questioned, the opinions of its opposers have came under fire on platforms such as Twitter. Vox, who claims Kjellberg’s ties to right-wingers could damage his career with YouTube, and is thus dangerous to teens, is very representative of the slant that social media encapsulates.

Kjellberg, who had simply stated support for YouTube channel E;R which by Vox‘s research has  been found to have “white supremacist messaging,” even down to its bio which by their claims, “refers to his reputation as a racist in the channel’s FAQ,” the channel however, simply says ” E;R is simply E;R,” to the question,Are you a racist/sexist/misogynist/MRA/Nazi/anti-Gemite/troll?”

Very representative of how the media skews situations, and then reports it through Twitter. Parler hopes to revolutionize this fear of sharing honest opinions, through moderation. 

Parler News founder and CEO John Matze wrote last month, “Alternative platforms will rise and those who are bold will switch. Big tech is not too big to topple, in fact, they are blinded by their size/power and are hurting themselves by ideologically targeting groups.” 

The ideologically targeted here? Unfortunately conservatives. Or fortunately, dependant on who is reading this.

Take Godfrey Elfwick, the Twitter account that was banned for poking fun at left concepts such as progressive aversion to free speech, wealth redistribution, and identity politics.

Whether Elfwick’s opinion is right or wrong, offensive or not, he did not violate the protected speech rights within the First Amendment; he did not use hate speech or slurs.

Twitter’s rules page headlines with the statement, “We believe that everyone should have the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers,” however, their rules regarding harassment and hate speech do not seem to perfectly conform to the accounts they have targeted.

Therefore, we now have Parler.