Parler, the new social media platform, has added about a million new users over the past two weeks, said John Matze, CEO of Parler, attributing the “mass migration” to “frustration with censorship” on Twitter. He offered his remarks on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak.
Parler describes itself as “a non-biased free speech driven entity” which “accepts your right to express your thoughts, opinions and ideals online.”
Parler was the “number one [app] for news” across mobile platforms in recent days, Matze said. “We’ve seen an influx of probably almost a million users in week and a half to two weeks.”
Parler added “a couple hundred thousand people overnight” after Twitter’s recent banning of British conservative commentator Katie Hopkins, said Matze. Twitter banned Hopkins for “hateful conduct.” The company also banned Carpe Donktum,” a meme maker who mocks the left.
Matze considered, “It looks like a lot of people are using their Twitter handles and Twitter accounts to drive people to Parler because of their frustration with the censorship on that platform.”
LISTEN:
Matze described Parler as an “unbiased” social media platform, recalling its inception in 2018 as a response to widespread political censorship across other social media outlets.
“We started to come up with an unbiased algorithm for media publications who [were] losing their revenue due to referral traffic loss,” Matze recalled. “Every time Facebook would change their algorithm, some media outlets would come out on top and others would see complete swings in their revenue due to the [loss of] referral traffic. So from there we kind of developed this idea of really building [an] unbiased social media as a whole.”
Matze continued, “The idea is there’s no biased algorithms. There’s no political censorship of any kind, and we don’t share, sell, or trade user data, and so the concept is pretty simple. We use a lot of we use Supreme Court cases, the FCC and other legal bases for our terms of service and community guidelines to be unbiased. That’s very simple, and yet it seems to be forgotten today as all of these tech companies are starting to behave — and they are behaving — as publications rather than town squares.”
“We’ve seen a huge influx of actually an Antifa group that’s been trying to get [on] the platform in bulk,” said Matze. “It’s been very interesting to watch that develop. They’ve created their own fake network of fake Trump supporters that are all engaging with each other and trying to trick Trump supporters into thinking they’re real people and then catching them in these nasty situations.”
Pollak asked, “How do you know they’re Antifa?”
Matze explained, “They keep throwing this flag. It’s like this gold and black flag with a picture of this dummy face and they call themselves, ‘the Manny.’ They’re all over the place in the dark corners of Parler.”
Know Your Meme recently identified “The Manny Will Not Be Televised” as a meme used in support of the Black Lives Matter campaign:
The Manny Will Not Be Televised is a catchphrase associated with the use of Manny from Diary of A Wimpy Kid as a symbol used both online and in physical spaces in support of the George Floyd protests. The name is a play on the Gil Scott-Heron song and poem “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.”
Parler wishes to cultivate quality political discourse, said Matze.
“We’re not a free speech purists,” Matze stated. “We want real conversations with real people. When we do our moderation, we take into account, ‘Is this person trying to contribute to the community?'”
Matze added, “We’re very very much trying to moderate them in a way that would be like a town square, like, ‘Can you say this legally in a town square?'”
Matze described spam as a “malicious” stifling of free speech. “For example, if you’re going on a congressman’s page [to] just spam them with the f-bomb over and over again, that’s spam, using the internet and using technology to flood somebody with content to drown out their voice, and that’s not acceptable.”
“We view spam as an attack on your free speech,” Matze said. “If someone were to come on your platform and they just comment the same nasty stuff over and over again, they’re not contributing to the conversation, and it’s actually the first rule in our community guidelines.”
Matze concluded, “Basically, if they’re contributing absolutely nothing to the conversation on your posts, and they’re doing it repetitively, that’s considered considered spam. … We think of spam as them trying to take away your voice, and the voice of everybody who’s trying to engage with you by just drowning you In nasty content.”
Parler has added “almost a million” new users over the past two weeks, Matze noted, identifying political censorship on competing platforms as a driver of his company’s growth.
Breitbart News Sunday broadcasts live on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern.
Follow Robert Kraychik on Twitter.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.