Claiming they're censored by Twitter and Facebook, some conservatives say they're moving to alternatives like Parler, which has 8M users, up from 4.5M last week
Since the election, millions have migrated to alternative social media and media sites like Parler, Rumble andNewsmax.
New York Times
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second wave of a pattern that has been building all year: Parler's CEO reported a 50% jump to 1.5M users back in June as Republicans began testing exits, and within days of the election the app hit the top of the US download charts. The new figure — 8M users, up from 4.5M in a single week — shows the post-election censorship grievance converting into actual signups at an accelerating rate.
The counterweight is already on record: a Washington Post analysis found [[a:960350|many of Parler's loudest cheerleaders remain more active on Twitter and Facebook than on Parler]], suggesting the migration is real in accounts but thinner in attention. That gap is what makes this story about platform leverage rather than a simple exodus.
First-order effects
Twitter and Facebook now face a politically significant cohort publicly framing their moderation practices as censorship, giving every future enforcement decision a churn cost it did not have before the election.
Parler, Rumble andNewsmax gain users, media attention, and a ready-made identity as the conservative alternatives, with Parler doubling its base in one week.
Second-order effects
The incumbents' content-moderation choices become pricing decisions: each high-profile action risks pushing more of the departing audience toward Parler and Newsmax, while the Washington Post engagement data suggests most of that audience still cannot be fully replaced off-platform.
Advertisers and publishers following conservative audiences get a fragmented target — attention split between incumbent networks with scale and upstarts with loyalty but unproven daily usage.
Third-order effects
If signup surges keep outrunning sustained engagement, the likely equilibrium is not replacement but parallel membership: conservatives maintaining accounts on both incumbent and alternative platforms, which entrenches a two-tier social media market organized by politics.
That structure raises the stakes of access-layer control — who hosts, distributes, and moderates these apps becomes the next battleground once the apps themselves grow large enough to attract scrutiny.
The trend: Post-election America is fragmenting into parallel social platforms, where political migration produces rapid user growth for alternatives like Parler without yet displacing incumbent engagement.
this retreat to Parler etc. by a significant number of aggrieved, extremely-online Conservatives is real, spurred by Facebook and Twitter's flurry of labeling election-related disinformation w/ @Kellen_Browning https://www.nytimes.com/...
YEAH SO BASICALLY THEY WOULDNT LET ANY OBSERVERS IN THE COUNTING ROOMS SO ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW HOW MANY VOTES WERE LEGAL VOTES AND IF THAT ISNT ENOUGH TO CONVINCE YOU THEN I CAN SHOW YOU SOME MORE INCRIMINATING STUFF. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF PARLER? https://twitter.com/...
i'm really curious to see how long this exodus lasts because if gab taught us anything about how the far right operates on these platforms, it's that users quickly realize the audience they've lost on twitter/facebook/youtube. https://twitter.com/...
Tbh I've seen a lot of articles about conservatives “flocking” but the numbers are still tiny. @fightfortheftr has more ppl on our email list than have “flocked” to Parler in recent weeks. There's also much larger existing alternatives like minds and mastodon https://twitter.com/…
Twitter and Facebook are horrible. The idea that “social” means “clicking like” and “sharing” is a very thin sad reflection of what it means to be social human beings. 3/
My favorite fact about Parler is that its creators intended for it to be pronounced “par-LAY” as if its user base would understand the French distinction.
These fascists keep creating “free speech zones” like 8chan, Gab, Parler, and 16chan. They always run into the same problem: literal mass shooters planning violence. https://twitter.com/...
Conservative anger over the result of the US election is pushing people in droves to join Parler, a social media network that claims to uphold free speech and was set up as an alternative to Facebook and Twitter. https://www.theverge.com/...
re everyone's Parler migration theories: right-wing media figures w huge Facebook/Twitter audiences are encouraging it with paranoid rhetoric conservatives love. most will lose interest, but enough of the most gullible marks will remain to fuel a lucrative side grift pipeline
interesting to me talking to a number of conservatives over the past few days is this flight to Newsmax Since Fox called Arizona for Biden and the race for Biden, they feel that Fox News is now “too liberal” for them further retreat into conservative media information bubble
Conservatives, the last decade: FUCK YOUR FEELINGS! Social Media Platforms: *label blatant disinformation in conservative social media posts* Conservatives, now: OH NO. OUR FEELINGS! THEY'VE BEEN HURT BY FACTS! https://twitter.com/...
It won't last, because these are people who live to harass and troll liberals. When they wall themselves off they inevitably end up fighting each other. https://twitter.com/...
In the past week: -Twitter censors a sitting president -YouTube blocks election-related videos -Eventbrite cancels Trump events -GoFundMe deletes data researchers -Facebook bans protest groups They are deliberately disenfranchising conservatives from the public square.
Pundits will kick and scream about Twitter and Facebook but they ultimately won't get the exposure they're looking for on Parler so they won't leave. They're not really outraged about having misinformation censored, or at least not enough to lose relevance by shuttering handles. …
They're scared, big time. The NY Times reached out again today for a story about my show going to number one. They're losing their information tech monopoly and they're shitting themselves as Parler and Rumble blow up, and conservative podcasts rule the roost. Nice work 👍
whatever Parler is now, in six months to a year it will mostly be the Dan Bonginos of the world assuring the remaining active userbase that they are their truest fans while bombarding them with GoFundMes, merch, and lead supplements, none of which Parler will regulate
How ridiculous is this Facebook banner? @realDonaldTrump @DonaldJTrumpJr @tedcruz This is an absolute joke and a huge reason people are leaving for Parler in droves. https://twitter.com/...
Oklahoma State Rep. Kevin McDugle has used his Parler platform to; spread QAnon conspiracy theories, and tag The Proud Boys in posts that included his speech at the state Capitol over the weekend https://www.normantranscript.com/ ...
2. Yes, Mark, you hide behind your staff, while censoring my posts and funneling millions into precincts during the election without revealing how much went to which areas of the country. I've many important questions to ask you, but you're a coward. No surprise.