In the weeks that followed November’s general election, Parler, the social media platform founded in 2018 by engineers John Matze and Jared Thomson, was steadily gaining momentum as it rose to the top of Apple’s App Store.
In a social media landscape saturated with left-leaning ideologues, Parler billed itself as a free speech microblogging platform, free of any political bias or censorship. This laissez-faire approach to social networking resonated with many, especially amid the increase of seemingly biased “fact checks” on political content. Within days of Twitter’s glaring foray into fact-checking, Parler reached over 850,000 daily downloads. Overtaking such giants as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook, Parler climbed to the top spot of the App Store downloads chart.
.png)
.png)
