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With Twitter cautiously moving towards limiting "the spread of potentially harmful and misleading content," by introducing new fact-check or warning labels on some tweets – the President of the United States', for example – when someone breaks the platform rules (eg inciting violence, or spreading misinformation), many right-wing and far right-wing commentators have decided to move to a new social media platform called Parler.
The app is co-founded by co-chairman of youth group Students For Trump, Ryan Fournier, who calls it "a platform where you don’t have to worry about getting censored or banned because you think differently than who runs it."
Several high-profile conservative politicians and speakers have jumped ship for the promise of a place to discuss ideas without censorship, including Ted Cruz (R-TX).
It turns out it might not be the free-for-all Wild West promised, however, with many people reporting that they'd been banned by the platform already.
It would appear there are in fact rules, and moderators to enforce them, just like every other social media platform out there.
As well as people being banned for apparently being a bit left-wing (so much for free speech), the CEO of Parler has gone into some more detail of what can earn you a silencing. And oh boy, they are quite something.
The rules make you wonder about the quality of clientele they are attracting.
"When you disagree with someone, posting pictures of your fecal matter in the comment section WILL NOT BE TOLERATED," the first rule states, which is just a fantastic start to any list of rules. A club that has to spell that out (presumably after multiple people broke that rule) is clearly one that needs to be joined. "Your username cannot be CumDumpster," the rules continue, adding that pornography isn't allowed. Sorry, Ted.
Replying "fuck you" to every comment will also not be tolerated, nor death threats.
So apologies to any free speech CumDumpsters out there who just wanted to find a place where they could express their ideas without CENSORSHIP and/or post pictures of their poop, it turns out all social media platforms have their lines that can't be crossed, even the ones that say otherwise.
The lines drawn by Parler just happen to be different to Twitter, in that they appear (so far) to be more concerned with banning people who swear rather than raging homophobes, racists, and transphobes.
