108: What is Parler? Everything you need to know about this social network with all the buzz

Last week, I heard of a social networking app that seemed to pop out of nowhere, exploding in the days after the election. It was an app that was having its moment.

It's a real thing, just hearing from people, talking to people. They are leaving Twitter. I mean, consider this. The president himself has been censored 52 times since election Day. Parlor or Parlay, as Joe was just saying before the commercial break, which positions itself as a free speech alternative to Twitter, has been growing fast. But just how big is it and does it really have a chance to rival the big social networks?

We have gained well over 4 million new accounts in the last several days, maybe 5. I'm losing track with numbers like that. I had to get to the bottom of the success of this top social networking app on the podcast. This week, I'm giving you the lowdown on Parler. All right, before I begin, full disclosure. I do not use Parler, nor did I know anything about the app before I sat down to do the research on it last week. This episode arose from my surprise. Shame even for me, not knowing anything about one of the fastest growing social media networks, Sac Le Bleu As a person who spends an excessive amount of time, effort and research helping my customers and listeners learn about digital PR and messaging. And here, one of the fastest growing social networks was growing under my own nose, and I had no idea. I dug in because I believe this social media site is different from many of the other ones out there because there are a lot of perceptions and opinions surrounding the site. And my initial thought was, hmm, my listeners should know about this app. If I have questions, they have questions. Now, many of you may be considering the app or perhaps you've seen someone recommend it to you online. There's certainly been a surge of users who have signed up to this new site since last week's election results. Now, here's why learning about this social networking site matters to you. Every time we go online, we give up a part of our identity and add parts to our reputation. So it's not only what we say on a social networking site that impacts people's perception of us. It's what we post. Now, I'm a big advocate for using open networks, online networks where you share content and opinions publicly, like Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. This broadens your knowledge. It expands your network. It helps you share your authority and provide a place to respond if the situation calls for it. Closed networks like WhatsApp and Facebook messenger keep your conversations in a controlled group. It's for private conversations. So if you're like me, you want to be in control of your social media profile. And the first step to securing your profile and your reputation is learning everything you can about the social media site you're using. Which brings me to Parler. Let's talk about what it is. What is the intent behind the social network, and is it the right network for you to use? After this episode, you'll have everything you need to know to make an informed decision if it's a place where you want to build or expand your network. All right, one what is Parler considered? An alternative to top social platforms like Twitter and, to a lesser degree, Facebook. It launched in August 2018, but Parler became the most downloaded app in the US as people were flocking to the platform for its free speech mantra. Like Twitter, Parler is built around your curated newsfeed, your you choose who to follow, you choose what you post, and users can upload images in addition to creating posts up to 1,000 characters, whereas users are confined to 280 characters. On Twitter, the name parlor, as in a sitting room where you greet your visitors. If you lived in the 19th century, the posts and the messages on the platform, they're called parlays. And to confuse matters even more. Furthermore, it's meant to take on the en francais form of parlay, which means to speak or to talk. Parlez vous francais, parlez tout parlez. But it's just not pronounced that way. On the front page of their website, the homepage copy reads speak freely and express yourself openly without fear of being deplatformed for your views. Engage with real people, not bots. Parler is people and privacy focus and gives you the tools you need to curate your parlor experience. Seems easy enough to understand. Sort of. They lost me on the word deplatformed, but here, let's have someone else explain it for us. Senator Ted cruz on Twitter, June 25.

2020 Big tech is out of control, filled with hubris and flagrantly silencing those with whom they disagree, from conservative media organizations to the President of the United States and millions of Americans in between. These actions don't just threaten our First Amendment rights and our free speech. They threaten the integrity of our elections and the future of our democracy. With another presidential election just months away, I'm working in the Senate every day to hold Big Tech accountable to the American people and to make sure that your voices are heard. That's why I'm proud to join Parler. This platform gets what free speech is all about, and I'm excited to be a part of it. Let's speak, let's speak freely and let's end the Silicon Valley censorship.

Also, one of the privately owned company's early investors is Rebecca Mercer, who along with her father, hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, has been a backer of President Trump and is also a major donor to conservative causes, including Breitbart News and former White House strategist Steve Bannon, who pled not guilty to fraud after being arrested on a luxury yacht in August of this year. Starting to make a little more sense now. All right, next, what makes Parler different from Twitter and Facebook? It appears the intent behind the platform was made day one. It serves as an alternative for people, many right wing politicians and media types who believe the big social sites like Twitter and Facebook are unfairly censoring them. And as I mentioned, I don't use this app and nor did I know much about it at all. It only came on my radar last week when a friend of mine posted something to film Facebook. And she's a Catholic conservative, she has a very strong following and she was starting to grumble about Facebook. And so she mentioned on Facebook to her followers that she was creating an account on Parler. There was lots of dialogue about the app in the chat and a number of the people were asking about the site and they started citing Wikipedia for background. Next stop for Molly Wikipedia to get the skinny on the site. Now here's what Wikipedia says about Parler. Parler has a significant user base of Trump supporters, conservatives and Saudi nationalists. Posts on the website often contain far right content, anti Semitism and conspiracy theories. The site markets itself as free speech and unbiased alternative to mainstream social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. However, journalists and users have criticized the service for content policies that are more restrictive than the company portrays and sometimes more restrictive than those of its competitors. That's Wikipedia's take. Also, there's this. A number of conservative politicians like Ted Cruz earlier, they've been asking their followers to head on over to Parler well, since the start of the summer. So if you're like me, if you've ever seen a thread from a discussion about Parler, you've likely seen comments about censorship, the narrow framing being utilized to persuade other users from jumping ship from Twitter or Facebook. It's the claim that many conservatives, Christian conservatives are using. They're saying that they're being censored, comments are being deleted, or in the case of President Trump, heavily moderated with warning labels slapped on a tweet. If Twitter deems its false Now Parler does state the service explicitly describes itself as non biased free speech social media focusing on protecting the user's rights. It's a general blanket statement, but also serves as a reminder that some platforms are banning extremists like Twitter who dumped Alex Jones in 2018 for harassment, and Twitter and Facebook booting QAnon groups from their sites. So you're starting to get the idea Parler is one of several sites launched in recent years all claiming to be free speech alternatives to the mainstream sites that allow for moderation. That's Twitter and Facebook. But then there's this. The morning after I learned about Parler, I was reading the New York Times and I came across an article about a police chief and Parlor Lang Holland. Well, spoiler, he was the police chief for the town of Marshall, Arkansas, a town with just over 1300 people located a little north of Little Rock. Well, turns out Chief Lang used Parlor to post or parlay a few comments on the site that forced his resignation. Comments like Will you and several hundred more go with me to DC and fight our way into the Congress and arrest every Democrat who has participated in this coup? Also, we may have to shoot and kill many of the communist BLM and antifa Democrat foot soldiers to accomplish this. Three explanation points there's also death to all Marxist Democrats. Take no prisoners, leave no survivors. Weekly listeners to this podcast are not surprised by what happened to Chief Lang if you post extreme or extremist views on an open network. Huge ramifications. Sidebar Let me talk for a moment about open networks. Here is a protection mover when you are posting anything online, ask yourself, does this conversation you are viewing or partaking in require an invitation? Do you need an invitation to read someone's comments? Or does someone need an invitation to read your comments? If the answer is no, you are looking at an open network. So Again, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, they're all open networks. The closed ones are sites where you have to invite people into the conversation. Those are the type of sites where you can kind of run roughshod on your commentary. Not that you should, of course, but these open networks are the ones that seem to get people into trouble. Okay, back to the podcast. Back to the episode. Back to Parler. Here's the last question I want to ask. Is Parler the right social media network for you? First, stop the user experience. How easy is Parler to use? Well, there's a lot happening on this site, per my research. You can follow other Parler users. You can tag those users in their posts that echo other content, so echo in quotation marks, which is, I guess, an equivalent to a share or a retweet. You can also upvote posts, and that would be similar to Reddit. So unlike the mainstream counterparts, Parler does have a verification that allows any user to confirm who they say they are. And you have to do that through submitting a form of identification that's different from Twitter and Facebook. On Parler, you have to prove who you are. This helps with misinformation. Parler also has gold badges for verified influencers that would be similar to Twitter's blue check marks. And again, I only know the second hand. I'm not a user. But for my research, the reviews are mixed on how easy the site is to navigate. I noted in the Facebook post I cited earlier that many new users on this thread were saying they were having trouble navigating the site. My friend suggested that they watch tutorials on YouTube to get the hang how to use it. So it's clear it doesn't have the ease of Twitter or Facebook or LinkedIn, where you just kind of post and go. Complaints about the site range from image embedding issues. That's where you upload an image, and hard to follow conversations. So replies and comments are separate that I've read, which can strip away the context of the original post. So losing context, I know, is a huge issue. I hear it often when people tell me why they don't like to speak with the media or why they don't like to use social media because things can be taken out of context. Conversations can be taken out of context. So here on Par Parlor, where they separate or divorce, the comment from the replies could lead to even more confusion and misinformation. Now, Parler does have community guidelines, and they're strict. They bar criminal activity, terrorism, child pornography, copyright violations, fraud and spam. The company says it tries to avoid removing any content or banning users, and it says it does not remove or filter content or accounts or on the basis of the opinion expressed within the content at issue. So here we are. The question is, is Parlor the place for you? Well, here's a question for you. If you were joining conversations echoing Donald Trump's claim that the November 3rd election was stolen by the Democrats through massive voter fraud. Well, no, he's not using the word fraud if that was rigged. Or if you use one of the top trending hashtags of the week of last week, hashtag stop the steal. A claim that Joe Biden, the projected winner of the 2020 presidential race stole the election. Well then Parler might be the place for you if you want to post your right leaning or hardline conservative views and opinions on social media without the blowback. Well then Parler might be your next best thing. If you're worried about the extremist views on the site. The company does say it takes it serious about its commitment for free speech and does not block extremist content. Now, what our nation's first social media president think of Parlor? Well, we don't know because he's still on Twitter. He's on Twitter for now while he's still president because Twitter has a policy framework for not banning current world leaders and candidates for office. Current Trump is two months away from losing that current status, so having him switch to Parlor would be a huge boost for the site if he ever left Twitter on his own accord or not. But the word out on the street is that he's planning to launch a right wing digital media brand of his own when he leaves the White House. Which means it's likely he won't stop for a conversation on Parler. And for the rest of you, there's always Twitter and Facebook. So there you have it. Everything you need to know about this app to decide if it's the right social media platform for you. Parler is the hot app at the moment, growing from 4.5 million users to over 8 million last week alone. But it still has a ways to go. Twitter has over 330 million users, Facebook has over 2 billion. You'll notice a lot of the marketing behind Parler is about free speech, but the unsaid is that Parler's popularity has exploded amid mounting frustration over Twitter and Facebook's supposed anti conservative bias. That's why it's the hot new app. So here's the takeaway. If you consider yourself to have a conservative voice, then Parler is a place for you to speak your mind and follow other like minded people, from politicians to big media personalities. If you have concerns about big tech censoring conservative content, then you'll likely feel far more comfortable and in control on Parler. And although Twitter and Facebook have denied censoring conservatives, they typically point to their terms of service when anyone breaks the rules. They're not likely to change their policies anytime soon. So just remember, if you do use it, Parler is an open network, not closed. What is parlayed there on the platform can parlay into the public space quickly. And for the rest of you, there's Twitter and Facebook or nothing. If you choose to sit out of the social space for a bit. Give your mind and fingers a break. That's all for this week on the podcast. I hope you found this episode helpful. Join me again next week for more insight and tips to help you communicate with confidence. Bye for now.