Since the American Presidential elections of 2020, the social media app, Parler, is now growing as a platform for promoting extremism and conspiracies. Because Parler is not flagging posts that can be harmful or misleading, some people, especially the right-wing-politicians, are having a great time-sharing idea to promote conservatism and extremism. The social media platform has become a safe haven for conspiring far-right extremists whose accounts are not getting blocked even for openly being so. Parler has been the most attractive platform for all mainstream conservatives.
Parler Vs Other Social Media Platform
The policy of Parler is totally in contrast with that of the highest-profile companies of social media in the world- Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. All these apps take quick actions to prevent any misleading information. They immediately take the required steps necessary to stop the spread of extremism or any kind of negativity. But things are very different with Parler. Its active users went up to 10 million in November, this year, doubling just within a month. The reason for it being popular is its tolerance towards things that are not tolerated by other platforms. However, Twitter still has the greatest number of active users which is roughly around 330 million.
All the well-known social media apps took the necessary steps during the 2020 presidential elections, to do away with the spread of false information. In fact, those steps were taken even before the election began.
Twitter introduced a prompt popup on all the tweeted articles suggesting the readers to actually read them properly before retweeting them. They also labeled all kinds of mail-in ballot misinformation.
Facebook started the prohibition of posts denying the holocaust. Along with that, they started blocking QAnon groups. They further started restricting all the accounts that were promoting the conspired “SaveTheChildren” theories that were adjacent to QAnon.
Though YouTube left numerous videos promoting conspiracy theories, it did make an effort by blocking advertisements and labeling false information related to the 2020 US presidential elections.
It can be said that Parler is the official social media platform for the Republicans and its supporters. In addition to the reason being the aforementioned points, some Republican politicians, Mark Levin in particular, signaled the fact that Parler was now the new official podium for the discussion of conservation.
