Twitter is losing users fast and hurting itself over censorship of right-wing thought leaders, who are trooping to Parler alongside their conservative base in protest.
According to Mediaite,1.5 million people have now joined Parler since its 2018 creation, 500,000 of those in the past week.
The 50 per cent increase in the platform’s user base is not unconnected with Twitter’s perceived left-wing bias.
The social media giant recently permanently banned the account of leading conservative voice – Carpe Donktum, and locked the account of The National Pulse Editor-In-Chief Raheem Kassam. Both accounts, which were locked Tuesday, have over 200,000 followers.
Conservatives that were already angered by Twitter’s seeming intolerance for right-wing accounts flocked to Parler after the ban, with US Senator Ted Cruz and Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz leading the charge.
In a tweet on Thursday, Cruz wrote, “I’m proud to join @parler_app — a 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. Follow me there@tedcruz!”
In an accompanying video, Cruz laments that the social media giants such as Facebook, Google and Twitter are run by left-wing Silicon Valley billionaires that have an “unparalleled ability to shape what Americans see, and hear and ultimately think”.
“And they use that power to silence conservatives and to promote their radical left-wing agenda.
“Big Tech has shown the ability to shadow-ban or to silence whatever you say, whatever you post without anyone ever knowing about it.
” On the flip side, if Big Tech have views that they want to promote, they can just collate your feeds so that they see only what they want you to see.
“Big Tech is out of control, filled with hubris and flagrantly silencing those with whom they disagree – from conservative media organisations to the President of the United States and millions of Americans in-between”.
Watch video:
I’m proud to join @parler_app — a 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. Follow me there @tedcruz! pic.twitter.com/pzUFvhipBZ
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 25, 2020
Gaetz wrote, “I’m on @parler_app. Follow me now! @RepMattGaetz Technology companies shouldn’t be able to put their thumb on the scale and reshape speech in our country. Features of the technology should apply equally to people regardless of viewpoint.”
“The left wants to defund the actual police,” Gaetz said in his first post on Parler. “I would just like to defund the thought police in Silicon Valley.”
Parler co-founder and CEO John Matze said in 2018 “big tech is not too big to topple, in fact, they are blinded by their size/power and are hurting themselves by ideologically targeting groups.”
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