Parler Gains Millions more Users as Stop the Steal Facebook Page Direct Users Here

Dwoskin, E., & Lerman, R. (2020, November 13). ‘Stop the Steal’ supporters, restrained by Facebook, turn to Parler to peddle false election claims. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/11/10/facebook-parler-election-claims/

This article talks about how the major social media platforms are facing a wave of conservative backlash after their crackdown on pages that tries to delegitimize the 2020 elections. One leader of a Facebook page stated that he was worried because the number of followers was growing so big since it made them vulnerable to a crackdown. The page leader didn’t want to lose the hundreds of thousands of MAGA army gained on Facebook. However, there was a backup plan that if the pages were brought down, the army should follow them on Parler. The author says that Stephen K. Bannon was driving millions of new users to Parler, an app with a free-speech doctrine, the reasons the app became the top app download in the weekend after elections. The effort by Trump and his supporters to contest the elections results is resulting in a high-stakes cat-and-mouse game for the major platforms. Since election day, Twitter and Facebook have been forced to label over a dozen of posts by Trump and also penalized some of his campaign team members and one family member. The author states that on Nov 9 2020, Parler achieved 880,000 downloads in a single day and grew from 4.5 million users to 9 million users in a week’s time. The curb the massive growth of the Stop the Steal group, Facebook banned hashtags like #stopthesteal, #voterfraud, and #sharpiegate. Also, live videos and forwarding of messages from these groups was stopped. A conservative radio host by the name Mark Levin, tweeted “Hurry and follow me at Parler,” because Facebook and Twitter kept censoring him. One of his tweets that was labeled stated that Republican state legislatures should exercise “final say” over choosing electors. The author says that the call to join Parler has been echoed by politicians as well including Arizona governor Jan Brewer and Fox News Host Maria Bartiromo.  

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