Like the famous line from Tina Fey’s blockbuster hit Mean Girls – which featured a rebellion against a dominant bully who assumed dictatorial control of every latest trend – Republican and right-leaning Twitter accounts are now looking to assert their own independence.
After being consistently bullied or forced to create new accounts after being “blocked” or “shadow banned” by left-leaning Twitter, these conservatives are now looking for a social media forum that will treat them fairly.
Enter Parler – a platform which is attracting conservatives in droves in the aftermath of Twitter’s latest lurch to the left.
“Parler is an unbiased social media focused on real user experiences and engagement,” the site proclaims. “Our content is moderated based off the FCC and the supreme court of the United States which enables free expression without violence and a lack of censorship.”
Like the original social media giant, Facebook, Twitter has veered wildly into the realm of left-leaning thought-policing in recent years – for which this news outlet has repeatedly rebuked them.
And will continue to rebuke them …
“The notion of a ‘marketplace of ideas’ that is open to everyone is one of the few things we’ve got left in America,” we wrote two years ago in a post calling the platform out for its overtly discriminatory tactics. “It is hugely disappointing one of the most important platforms in that marketplace has decided to pick sides.”
Just last month, we encouraged Twitter to “stop thought-policing and get back to being what it once was, an open forum that enforces its community rules even-handedly.”
It has not done that …
Just last week, the social media app banned a Trump supporter and former Brietbart editor – prompting a surge of signups for Parler, a forum where “conservatives can share opinions and articles without fear of retribution,” according to one of our Beltway insiders.
Elected officials – including U.S. senator Ted Cruz of Texas – are embracing the new site.
“I’m proud to join Parler – a platform (that) gets what free speech is all about – and I’m excited to be a part of it,” Cruz tweeted last week. “Let’s speak. Let’s speak freely. And let’s end the Silicon Valley censorship.”
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Several of our readers reached out to us this week, encouraging us to join the forum …
Created in 2018 by John Matze and Jared Thomson, Parler attracted 500,000 new users in the week following Twitter’s latest round of thought-policing, according to Rudy Takala of Mediaite.
Matze gave an interview to Neil Cavuto of Fox News last week explaining his site’s modus operandi – specifically its commitment to allowing the market to determine the value of a thought as opposed to Orwellian censors.
“(Users) can make any claim they’d like, but they’re going to be met with a lot of commenters, a lot of people who are going to disagree with them,” Matze said. “That’s how society works, right? If you make a claim, people are going to come and fact check you organically.”
Exactly … in fact, Matze is articulating the core premise of the “marketplace of ideas” as espoused by the legendary U.S. supreme court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
“The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas – that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market,” Holmes wrote in his famous dissent from the 1919 supreme court case Abrams v. United States (250 U.S. 616).
(Click to view)
(Via: Getty Images)
Free trade in ideas … that is the key line.
And that is what is currently lacking on “mainstream” social media.
“It only makes sense conservatives need an outlet for their opinions, instead of living with the concern their account will be blocked,” our Beltway insider said. “Twitter used to be a place for open ideas and political conversation, but conservatives have been deprived of their right to free speech.”
“In a society currently suffering from protests demanding equality, it’s time we demand equality for all opinions on social media,” she concluded.
We concur …
-FITSNews
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