America’s Most Dangerous Platform is Growing

Parler has been thrust to the center stage by Trump Supporters recently, heralded as a “Free Speech” alternative to Twitter.

Launched in 2018 by John Matze, a fervent Trump supporter and bankrolled by Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of Robert Mercer- famous for funding the now defunct data collection agency Cambridge Analytical which stole the data of 87 Million Facebook users under the guise of a personality app and then sold it to Donald Trump and Ted Cruz for their 2016 Presidential campaigns, Parler is set to surpass the infamy of the former.

Populated mostly by far-right extremists, QAnon Conspiracy theorists and radicalized Trump loyalists that have been suspended or banned from traditional social media outlets, Parler has been described as the virtual “Home of Hate” by critics. However, users of the micro-blogging website, which has seen an extraordinary surge in the last 24 hours (That crashed the entire site on the even of January 8.) since Donald Trump was himself suspended by Twitter, laud it as a digital stronghold where free speech is uninhibited by political correctness- or inconvenienced by legalities.

The term “Free Speech” is often used as a sort of Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free-Card one grants themselves to justify unrepentant, often hyper-aggressive hate speech. Those who lament their suspension or permanent…