The Rise And Fall Of Parler | Avast

The Rise And Fall Of Parler | Avast
David Strom, 11 January 2021

Examining Parler's surge and eventual takedown, as well as what's next for the platform



In the past week, we have seen the takedown of a social network by its largest technology partners. I refer to Parler, of course. The events weren’t entirely a surprise, but their velocity and totality were unusual.
First, Apple and Google removed the Parler apps from the iTunes and Play stores. Then, its hosting partner, Amazon, shut down its servers on Amazon Web Services (although, Amazon preserved its data so the software could be reconstructed at some point in the future). 
The history of Parler
Parler is a microblogging site, like Twitter. While it uses different terms, individuals can post short messages and like and respond and re-post messages, mostly using smartphone apps. It called itself as the world’s “premier free speech social network” and became the darling of the right-wing political class in the US.
Over the past year, its popularity has grown, thanks to having many conservative media stars including Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Mark Levin and Maria Bartiromo join the network and promote their use of it on their TV shows and podcasts. Listeners were also encouraged to join so that they would get the uncensored content without any filters. And join up they did: until the takedowns, there were about 15 million Parler users, a number that had doubled since before the November elections.
Parler CEO John Matze told the New York Times that the company would probably shut down "for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch". He is currently casting about for a new host ..

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