Freedom for Parler

Such platforms are called “alt-tech,” as they are an alternative to more mainstream social media networks. However, the association between “alt-tech” and ““alt-right”” is not misplaced. Creators of alt-tech platforms are often conservatives and hold right wing beliefs.

Alt-tech platform users, including many Trump supporters, believe that “progressive” elites constantly lie to them, while technology giants, such as Google and Facebook, take away their freedom of speech.

These beliefs are shared by the creators of and investors in these platforms as well. Before the insurrection at the Capitol, Parler actively shared posts from #FightForTrump and #TheStormIsHere. The second hashtag is a slogan associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that Trump is the only one who is challenging a worldwide conspiracy.

This posting activity led to Parler being shut down. First, Google removed it from its Google Play Store; then Apple followed suit. Finally, Amazon suspended Parler’s web services. Parler responded by suing Amazon. John Matze, founder and CEO of Parler, said that the platform might not go up again.

Parler was created in 2018, and like many similar social media networks, claims to provide more freedom than mainstream social media.

Parler only blocked content if it was promoting something obviously illegal. Furthermore, it collected much less information about its users than mainstream social media. The popularity of such social media networks started growing back in November during the U.S. presidential election, when many Trump supporters accused the Democrats of trying to steal the election. There are many groups with such “stop the steal” themes on alt-tech platforms. By the end of December and the beginning of January, Parler had 15 million registered users and 2.3 million active users.

Rebekah Mercer is the most famous of Parler’s investors. She is the daughter of the billionaire, Robert Mercer, who invested in Cambridge Analytica among other companies. Mercer herself is well known for her conservative views and critique of mainstream social media.

“John [Matze – co-founder of Parler] 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. 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,” Mercer wrote on her own Parler account.

Before Parler was shutdown, Matze lamented about “a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the marketplace. We were too successful too fast.” His comment was quite representative of the opinions of alt-tech social media users.

Other Alternatives

Although Parler is the most well-known alt-tech platform at the moment, there are many other social media networks and messaging apps that claim to be an alternative to the mainstream and, thus, excessively censored social media platforms.

One such relatively well-known platform, which has been involved in numerous scandals, is Gab. It was founded even earlier than Parler: launched privately in 2016 and then publicly in 2017. From the start, it billed itself as an alternative to Twitter.

The service had 1.16 million registered users in April 2020, but the number has only grown since then. According to Gab founder and CEO Andrew Torba, 600,000 new users registered on Gab within hours of Parler’s shutdown.

Torba once worked in Silicon Valley, but started critiquing the direction in which social networking services appeared to be heading a few years ago. He was particularly concerned with attempts to censor conservative content.

“I didn’t set out to build a ‘conservative social network’ by any means. But I felt that it was time for a conservative leader to step up and to provide a forum where anybody can come and speak freely without fear of censorship. Every major communication outlet, every major social network, is run, owned, controlled and operated by progressive leaders, progressive workers in Silicon Valley,” Torba said in a 2016 interview with The Washington Post, when Gab was still operating privately.

Critics of Gab accuse the platform of allowing extremist, anti-Semitic and radical content. Bloomberg writes that some of the most popular groups on Gab (groups of up to 100,000 users) are those of QAnon conspiracy theorists and Trump supporters who allege Trump won the 2020 election.

In 2018, several companies terminated their relationship with Gab because Pittsburgh Synagogue shooter Robert Gregory Bowers had an active Gab profile.

Another social media network similar to those mentioned above is MeWe. It is popular among alt-right users and barely regulates posted content. It was launched in 2012, but gained popularity in recent times due to #StopTheSteal posts, posts in support of Trump, and posts against the vaccine. According to data from Apptopia, MeWe had about 15 million users at the beginning of this week.

Many people downloaded MeWe when it became known that Parler was about to be shut down. Based on data from MeWe itself, 1 million new users registered over the course of the last week, and on Sunday it ranked No. 7 in the U.S. App Store.

MeWe also became very popular in Hong Kong after the 2019-2020 protests. It was billed there as an alternative to Facebook, one that would not regulate posted content nor be censored by the Chinese government.

MeWe spokesman David Westreach commented on the rise in MeWe’s popularity: “People are leaving Facebook and Twitter en masse because they are tired of the breaches of confidentiality, targeting, political bias, manipulation of news source and capitalistic surveillance perpetrated by these social networking services.”*

The network CloutHub is designed to be a service for the creation of a “social, civil and political networking” based on the freedom of speech. This network only appeared recently in January 2019, and it also grew in popularity after Parler’s shutdown. According to its website, CloutHub’s goal is to give “everyone a platform to have their voice heard.” This social media platform only has about 255,000 users and is not very popular. However, this number increased by 31,000 this past week.

There is an alternative to YouTube as well: Rumble, a Canadian video-sharing platform, that is popular among conservative and right-leaning users. This platform was fairly unknown until recently. But, it started gaining popularity after Republican Rep. Devin Nunes and conservative radio host and blogger Dan Bongino became Rumble users in August and November 2020 respectively.

Many libertarian, conservative, far-right authors and political commentators, including Dinesh D’Souza and Stephen Bannon, have Rumble accounts. A few days ago Rumble sued Google, accusing the company of ranking YouTube higher in search engine results than Rumble.

Platforms that aim to protect their users’ confidentiality, for example, Signal and Telegram, have gained popularity as well.

Last week Signal was the No. 1 most downloaded app in the U.S. App Store. Furthermore, according to Sensor Tower, the messaging app was downloaded 7.5 million times from Jan. 6 to Jan. 10, a 42-fold increase from the previous week.

In the U.S., Telegram was in second place. But, worldwide it was downloaded 25 million times between Jan. 9 and Jan. 12.

The rise in popularity of independent messaging apps was caused by two factors. Firstly, the situation with Trump’s social media accounts, and, secondly, the changes in the updated WhatsApp user agreement. At the beginning of January, a provision concerning the transfer of personal user information from WhatsApp to Facebook was added to the WhatsApp user agreement. Obviously, this made many users unhappy.

Many experts believe that the danger of alt-tech platforms such as Parler, Gab and MeWe is that conspiracy theorists brood here in like-minded company. Thus, they constantly receive support and validation for their beliefs about a “stolen election,” dangerous vaccines and other issues.

Of course, these effects are prevalent on social media in general. However, in the cases mentioned above, proponents of marginalized theories cluster together and fake news spreads like wildfire.

“The purposeful lack of content regulation gives freedom to users with extremist views; the freedom to not only propagate their opinions, but also to coordinate events and actions, such as the insurrection at the Capitol,” stated Diara Townes, representative of Townes, a project that fights misinformation.**

*Editor’s note: Although accurately translated, neither the source of the quoted remark or the remark itself could be independently verified.

**Editor’s note: Diara Townes works for the U.S. bureau of First Draft, an organization dedicated to protecting communities from harmful misinformation. Although accurately translated, her remarks here could not be independently verified.