ABC News: ‘Free speech’ social media platform Parler is a hit among Trump supporters, but experts say it won’t last
ABC News: 'Free speech' social media platform Parler is a hit among Trump supporters, but experts say it won't last
Parler, a Twitter-style social media platform, has gained popularity mostly among President Donald Trump’s supporters and right-wing conservatives after the 2020 presidential election, but experts told ABC News they believe it’s unlikely the platform will grow any further.
“They have this echo chamber and they can’t trigger anyone or target anyone because everyone believes what you believe,” said Fadi Quran, campaign director at Avaaz, a global civic organization that studies misinformation. “It gets boring to be sharing the same type of hate, and so they end up having to come back to the top five social media platforms.”
For Fadi Quran, campaign director at Avaaz, a global civic organization that studies misinformation, Facebook and Twitter are also to blame for the spread of election misinformation. He said the platforms are doing too little too late.
“We saw fake videos circulating social media after the election of people allegedly burning ballots that got millions of views before they were taken down,” said Quran. “Facebook could retroactively message them and say, ‘hey, we noticed you watched this video, it turned out to be misinformation’ but it’s not doing that.
Last week, Facebook shut down a “stop the steal” group that had gathered over 356,000 members.
A spokesperson for Facebook told ABC News that while there is no “silver bullet solution” to combat misinformation, the company has taken a multi-pronged approach that includes removing accounts and content that are against the platform’s community standards, reducing the spread of false news by fact checking, and adding warning labels to posts.
Similarly, Jesse Littlewood, vice president of campaigns at Common Cause, a nonpartisan watchdog group, told ABC News that some of Facebook’s actions have been inefficient.
“I would give them a mixed grade,” said Littlewood. “On the one hand, they’ve been quick on some issues, but I still think they step in after a post has been circulating on the web for a while when damage has already been done and there’s already a huge amount of influence.”