Anti-Twitter conservatives in US push rival Parler as alternative

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IANS | 29 Jun, 2020
With Twitter showing no signs of relenting in flagging tweets that violate its policies, including those of US President Donald Trump, several Republican politicians have started pushing the social media platform Parler as an alternative.

From Ted Cruz and Jim Jordan to Elise Stefanik and Nikki Haley, many have already joined the platform which was founded by computer scientists John Matze in 2018.

Leading the push to make a shift to Parler is Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale who has been on the platform for about two years now.

In a post last month, he even made some suggestions to make Parler emerge as an attractive alternative to Twitter. These recommendations included spending money on luring more people from the media and hiring a designer, according to a report in CNBC.

Parler calls itself "an unbiased social media focused on real user experiences and engagement."

Number of users on the platform increased from 1 million to more than 1.5 million over the course of about one week after The Wall Street Journal last week said the Trump administration was in search of alternatives to Facebook and Twitter over fears that these two platforms could flag or remove more content as the election approaches.

However, this sudden growth has also put the 27-year-old Matze, who is also the CEO of Parler, in a peculiar position as he does not want the platform to be seen as an echo chamber for pro conservatives.

In a bid to attract liberals to the platform, Parler even announced a $20,000 "progressive bounty" to a progressive pundit, commentator or writer with 50,000 followers on Twitter or Facebook for opening a Parler account and engaging in an open debate.

In fact, Parler doubled the amount after it found few takers for its earlier $10,000 proposal.