Big League Politics recently reported on the plight of Parler, a social media upstart receiving a great deal of support from Republican politicians and talking heads, as it has been thrown off the web following the raucous Jan. 6 Capitol protest.
Parler has done itself no favors by relying on Amazon to provide their cloud hosting services, and then switching to another provider who has a blanket ban on all so-called hate speech in their terms of service without defining what really falls under that classification.
In a recent profile from The Telegraph, it was explained how the organization’s billionaire backer, Rebekah Mercer, got Parler back online. She acquiesced to censorship policies that are supported by the Big Tech giants.
“One thing the company has added, likely in part as a play to be added back to the Apple App Store, is automated moderating ability, which involves computer systems scanning posts to flag offending material. Major social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have employed this type of moderating technology for years, to varying degrees of success, but Parler had long resisted,” the profile stated.
Parler has also brought on board a new CEO who is pushing a scheme that would allow oligarchs like George Soros to rewrite the Constitution.
Mark Meckler, founder of the Convention of States Project, is now heading up Parler on at least a temporary basis. The Convention of States Project wants to create a new constitutional convention that would put every provision of the U.S. Constitution up for grabs. It would give liberals an opportunity to codify all of their most grandiose and destructive schemes into the law.
“His 2012 book advocates for ‘single-issue constitutional conventions,’ but he has declared under oath that the Article V Convention is not a Constitutional Convention,” a representative from the John Birch Society said to the National File regarding Meckler. The John Birch Society is a patriotic group that has opposed what they call a “Con Con” for decades.
“As well, he hosted with Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig the Constitutional Convention Conference. Again, he has declared under oath that the Article V Convention is not a constitutional convention,” they added.
Lessig is a far-left operative with deep ties to George Soros. He led an effort to overturn the results of the 2016 presidential election by urging electors to put in Hillary Clinton instead of Donald Trump. These are the types of cronies who are behind Meckler’s plot to permanently alter the U.S. Constitution.
Although Parler may have started with the best of intentions, they have already been co-opted by the globalist establishment and forced to grovel to their opposition just to stay online. They may ultimately be remembered as an example of how not to run an alternative social media platform.
Web Vulnerabilities
- Parler’s app is vulnerable to Apple and Google
- Parler is vulnerable to being delisted by their name registrar
- Parler’s UI is horrible (especially for those used to Twitter)
- Parler has no API (that I’ve found)
- Parler is a closed system (your posts aren’t visible to non-members)
- Parler has bait-and-switched users with their “free speech” spiel
- Parler is vulnerable to blacklisting by payment platforms
- Parler is vulnerable to being deplatformed by their hosting provider
- Parler requires personal info, which can be compromised or sold
- Gab has faced and solved all of these issues
I hate social media, but I’ve had accounts on Gab, Parler, and Twitter for about a year, so I’ve used them enough to get a feel for the usability and member engagement. I’ve been in the software development world in various capacities for almost thirty years, so I have some opinions on how things work in this space and what’s possible.
At this point, sadly, I think Parler is a bad joke. If someone got me into meeting to hear a pitch for a conservative-friendly platform modeled after Parler, in 2020, I’d throw them out of my office and probably fire the person who set up the meeting. I’ve been supportive of Brad Parscale, but I have no idea what in the hell he’s thinking here.
I don’t have a dog in this fight, and have nothing against Parler itself. I would love an alternative to Gab that would give the President another platform he could use to communicate with us, but right now, Gab seems to be the only platform that could accommodate the scale and functionality required by the President to move from Twitter.
Twitter is like the once-hard core rocker who used to play heavy-metal music and bang chicks all night, but ten years later is cruising the truck stop looking for a driver to blow to get a ride back to CHAZ. It’s sad to see what they’ve become.
As an alternative to Twitter, Gab and Parler are perceived to be the viable options, although I don’t consider Parler to play in the “alternative” space. They’re allowed to have an app, funding, and some big PR campaigns pushing member registrations, but in a sector controlled by communists, those are privileges, and Parler will have no choice but to take a knee (if not already) if they wish to continue operations.
Parler’s UI is crap, especially if you’re used to Twitter; I’m seeing a lot of complaints about its usability. Nobody is leaving and deleting their Twitter accounts to move to Parler. I’d love to see Parler’s daily active user metrics relative to new registrations, spread over six months. I bet a majority of users register, make a few posts, realize how bad it sucks, declare “I’m joining the fight on Parler!”, then scurry back to Twitter.
Parler’s core competency is their embedded commenting system (I originally registered to comment on Epoch Times articles); competing as a social media player was secondary. Gab was a social media platform first that later integrated their commenting system and browser. I think Parler competes with Disqus (who we’re going to change because of their horrible ads) more than Twitter and Gab.
Unlike Parler, Disqus allows most sites to embed their commenting system. I made several requests to Parler to use their system, but they just ignored me. Oh well. Gab has groups, a secure chat system, and an integrated news feed. Parler has nothing.
Incredibly, Parler doesn’t have an API, which means developers can’t build on top of their service. This is basic stuff. Twitter and Gab provide APIs, although Twitter has become restrictive to the point where they might as well not even have one.
Parler is closed to the public, so non-members can’t see your posts. How stupid is that? An important functionality of social media platforms is embedding. On this site, for example, I can embed tweets, YouTube videos, Instagram posts, and Gab posts (but seems to be back to square one — at least working on it). It’s not even an option with Parler.
If the President moved to Parler today, his posts would be hidden from the public. I’ll give Parler the benefit of the doubt that they’re working on this.
Parler has been promoting itself as a place that supports people to speak freely, yet they’ve been banning accounts for silly posts, therefore, it’s not a “free speech” site. In fact, Twitter may be less restrictive. On Gab, I never have to worry about losing my account.
- https://bigleaguepolitics.com/betrayed-how-parler-sold-out-to-the-globalist-establishment-to-get-back-online/
- https://conservativehardliner.com/why-parler-sucks-and-why-gab-superior
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