Posted on 06/28/2020 9:06:45 PM PDT by RandFan
Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik and Nikki Haley all have something in common, other than a strong affection towards President Trump.
The three Republican politicians joined social media app Parler this week, adding their profiles to a site thats emerged as the new digital stomping ground for anti-Twitter conservatives. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas arrived earlier this month and Rep. Devin Nunes of California started in February, while Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has been a member since 2018, the year the app launched.
Its about time yall joined me on @parler_app, Paul tweeted on Wednesday. Whats taking the rest of you so long?!
To be fair, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has also been on Parler since 2018. Eric Trump, the presidents son, and his wife, Lara, joined on the same day last month. Like Twitter, the app lets users share comments, photos and news stories with their followers.
The catalyst for the latest growth surge was a story from The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, which said that the Trump administration was looking for alternatives to Facebook and Twitter over concern that more content is going to be blocked as the election campaign heats up. The Journal named Parler as a possible alternative.
Two days later, Parler was the top-ranked iPhone app in the news category, ahead of Twitter and Reddit, and 24th overall, just behind Venmo and WhatsApp, according to App Annie. User growth surged to 1.5 million from 1 million over the course of about a week, said John Matze, Parlers 27-year-old founder and CEO.
Were a community town square, an open town square, with no censorship, Matze said in an interview on Thursday, from his home in Las Vegas. If you can say it on the street of New York, you can say it on Parler.
Parler is playing into the hands of conservatives, who have become more vocal in their criticism of Twitter since the site started flagging Trumps tweets for promoting violence or abusive behavior or making false claims that could confuse voters. Trump supporters have long argued that the dominant Silicon Valley platforms have been out to censor conservative voices, even as those very same people continue to post on those sites and rack up followers by the thousands.
Rep. Jordan of Ohio told his 1.4 million Twitter followers on Friday to come over to Parler, where they dont censor or shadow ban, referring to the practice of banning users in a way thats not apparent to them. By late afternoon he had about 3,100 followers on Parler.
Twitter regularly denies treating people differently based on their political views. Liz Kelley, a Twitter spokeswoman, told CNBC in a statement that, We enforce the Twitter Rules impartially for everyone, regardless of their background or political affiliation.
When Nunes joined in February, he told his Twitter fans, which number 1.1 million, to join him on Parler if theyre tired of left wing censorship of big tech. Nunes has an infamous relationship with Twitter, after attempting to sue the company for defamation and negligence and naming as defendants two anonymous parody accounts, Devin Nunes Mom and Devin Nunes Cow.
With Devin Nunes came a whole pack of haters, said Matze. He said that parody accounts are fine and even welcome, but Parler draws a line when it comes to spammers. You cant spam peoples comment sections with unrelated content, he said.
Thats not the only no-no on Parler, which has a fairly thorough set of community guidelines. The app doesnt allow terrorist organizations or support for terrorism, the sharing of false rumors, violent language (what the site describes as fighting words) toward others, blackmail or pornography.
For verification, Parler awards a gold badge to public figures to distinguish them from parody accounts, which get a purple badge.
Progressive bounty
Matze, a computer scientist who founded the company in 2018, is grateful for the growth even if all the new verifications are creating a lot of extra work for his 30-person team.
But Matze doesnt want the app to be just an echo chamber for conservative voices. Personally, he says he doesnt like either political party and he wants to see more healthy debate. Hes so intent on getting some liberals onto the platform that hes offering a $20,000 progressive bounty for an openly liberal pundit with 50,000 followers on Twitter or Facebook to start a Parler account.
The company will judge the best one, based on engagement with the community, and pay that person the reward. Matze said theres been such little response that he increased the original proposed payment from $10,000 to $20,000.
The whole company was never intended to be a pro-Trump thing, Matze said. A lot of the audience is pro-Trump. I dont care. Im not judging them either way.
Where Matze is in full agreement with the Parler audience is in his opinion of Twitter. He thinks the company is targeting conservatives with censorship.
I dont see why you need to censor the presidents tweets, he said. If you dont like what he has to say, vote him out of office.
Matze expects Parler to become a more attractive site for a more diverse audience over time because he sees Twitter continuing down a path of alienating right-wing voices, and no one is going to want to stay on Twitter if the conservatives are gone.
But he recognizes that the political tone of his platform will probably make it hard for him to raise money from investors in Silicon Valley, which leans Democratic and is decidedly anti-Trump. Thus far, hes funded the company with angel money and said hell soon be looking to raise a first institutional round of financing.
I can only speculate that they wouldnt be interested unless theyre ideological, he said, referring to traditional venture investors.
His bigger challenge, and one that venture capitalists know well, is the difficulty in turning a big audience into a massive audience and turning that into a business. Few ad-supported companies have managed that feat. Matze said the site has a nascent ad business, but that revenue has not been a focus of the company. One model hes considering is a revenue share, so that users can monetize their own fanbase without all of the benefits going to the company.
Theres much more to do first, though, on the product side. For example, sharing content isnt as easy as on other networks. If you share a post with a friend via a text message, the other person cant view it without being logged in. Matze says hes fully intent on opening the platform but user growth has gotten in the way of building it out.
For the Trump campaign, that appears to be a significant hurdle. Parscale, who has 159,000 followers on Parler, compared to almost 700,000 on Twitter, made a number of suggestions to the company last month, like recommending that it spend money to lure more media members and hire a designer.
With just a few months until the election and Trump sinking in the polls, hes not hiding his ultimate goal.
It must be buttoned up, he wrote on May 29. I want to love it. I want to use it, I want to help. However, more than anything I want to win in November.
Tommy Robinson over in the UK is also on Parler.
Hail Parler.
Screw Twitter.
Ari Levy. Stupid writer who believes he is smarter than two billion Christians. CNBC: garbage company.
Parler is great. President Trump is our leader who can use any computer application that he wants. I wish he would use Free Republic.
He said anything that can be said on a NY street can be said on here.
I don’t know if he’s ever walked these streets :)
But free speech is the name of the game.
Or used to be.
The catalyst for the latest growth surge was a story from The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, which said that the Trump administration was looking for alternatives to Facebook and Twitter over concern that more content is going to be blocked
The administration needs to fix this problem....deplatform them. Make them publishers.
I thought POTUS was going to do this a month ago.
Wellll......we’re waiting :-)
ping
I dunno - I’m leery of Parler has it demands your phone # up front.
Has Mr. Romney climbed aboard yet?
I figure he may want to keep a close watch on his
associates/ rivals. Mitt will probably try to Mask himself, by using Mike Lee’s Parler account first.
“ the political tone of his platform will probably make it hard for him to raise money from investors in Silicon Valley”
LOL!
Truth in a CNBC article!
Parler demands ‘A’ phone number as account reference.
It doesn’t need to be your most private number.
The SPLC, ADL, Media Matters, and a host of other leftist groups are going flood Parler with provocateurs pretending to be 'Right-Wing Extremists', 'White Supremacists', 'Racists', 'Holocaust Deniers' and others.
The SPLC and ADL will declare Parler a 'hate site' and their media lapdogs will promote the narrative.
How many do you have? I’ve only got the ONE.
Sanity on this thread. Wow! Parler is a dream, yet to be put threw the free market of the internet and beyond.
It would not surprise me if they did that and tried to sabotage it ... either them or one of the lefty media will think it’s a good idea to try and infiltrate,
.
Be aware is all I can say.
Matze, a computer scientist who founded the company in 2018, is ... offering a $20,000 progressive bounty for an openly liberal pundit with 50,000 followers on Twitter or Facebook to start a Parler account.
That's strike one.
Use free google phone number.
I only have two phones right now.
One for everyday calls and purchasing, the other for when I don’t wish to leave a lit up map of when/where I’ve been traveling to. The second phone, I take the battery out, when I’m done with it. Noting that important. Just old customs of insuring my privacy when it matters.
Grennell is now on Parler I LOVE Parler!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.