The U.S. presidential election ended in controversy, during which many mainstream media and social media platforms were criticized for being biased, strongly criticizing President Donald Trump while belittling Democratic Party candidate Biden, triggering strong discontent. According to reports, the conservative public who supported Trump’s candidacy have shown a clear difference in their media preferences after the election, shifting from Facebook and Twitter to new platforms such as Parler and CNN Newsmax, which do not censor and filter speech and news.
Switching to a new platform that does not censor and filter speech such as Parler, Newsmax
Even Fox News pre-empted Biden’s announcement that Arizona was taken by Biden before the vote count was complete, which was discredited by die-hard conservative viewers who thought the station had become too “liberal. The “I’m not going to do that”. Trump also tweeted on the 12th mocking Fox’s plummeting weekday and weekend ratings as the station “forgets what makes them successful”.
In this context, conservative viewers turned to social media platforms such as Parler, Rumble, MeWe, Gab, Telegram, and right-wing media outlets such as Newsmax News Network. Bret Schafer, a disinformation expert at the non-profit Alliance for the Defense of Democracy (ASD), part of the US think tank the German Marshall Fund (GMF), points out that censorship on social media platforms often results in users’ “losing their minds” and “losing their minds. The shift, however, has been more pronounced since the election, when these non-traditional social media outlets “succeeded in attracting a more disillusioned mainstream conservative audience”.
Parler exploded with 3.3 million downloads in the last 2 weeks.
According to statistics, the Parler platform, founded in 2018, has been downloaded 3.3 million times since the end of the three-day election in the Apple and Google app stores, more than any other app of the same nature, and has accumulated 7.3 million users worldwide, many of whom are Republican congressmen and celebrities such as Fox host Maria Bartiromo, and even the Trump team has begun to use the channel to make announcements.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal noted on the 14th that Parler has received financial backing from Rebekah Mercer, a conservative activist and daughter of hedge fund investor and Republican goldman Robert Mercer. She and Parler CEO John Matze created Parler to provide “a neutral platform for free speech” “as the tech giants become more arrogant and authoritarian,” Rebekah stressed.
Daniel Kreiss, a professor at the University of North Carolina’s Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, admitted that conservatives are frustrated with the censorship of social media platforms, especially those targeting Trump, and questioned the motivation for the recent move to censor these platforms. However, Kreiss also warned that Parler and similar platforms are prone to attracting groups of people who are not tolerated on other platforms, such as racists and anti-Semites, and may encourage hateful content and violence.
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