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The Right’s New Favorite Social Media Platform Parler Is Just as Restrictive as Twitter
The platform bans ‘fisticuffs’ but allows ‘buttock’
Conservative internet personalities are migrating to Parler, a social media app created in 2018 that bills itself as a “non-biased free speech” platform. The wave of support follows Twitter’s recent decision to permanently suspend Logan Cook, a pro-Trump meme creator who goes by the moniker “CarpeDonktum” and was removed from the platform on Tuesday over repeated copyright violations.
But while Parler claims to promote “free expression,” a closer look at its guidelines reveals a set of rules that in many ways is just as restrictive, or even more so, than Twitter’s own terms of service.
Parler (pronounced “par-lay,” as in the French word meaning “to speak”) was founded by John Matze, a libertarian software developer in Nevada who briefly worked at Amazon, according to LinkedIn. It is functionally similar to Twitter, allowing people to follow other users and access a news feed akin to Twitter Moments…
