Following the 2020 U.S. presidential election, you might have heard about a platform called Parler.
Positioning itself as a social network website, the service has topped the app download charts since President-elect Joe Biden was crowned the election’s victor.
But what is Parler, and how do you create an account?
Founded in August 2018, the American microblogging website said it wanted to create a space for people to have free speech.
According to its community guidelines, the company’s goal is to provide all members with a “welcoming nonpartisan Public Square” and a social platform in “the spirit of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
“We prefer that removing community members or member-provided content be kept to the absolute minimum,” the company states in its community guidelines. “We prefer to leave decisions about what is seen and who is heard to each individual.”
The document, available via the website, says it will not decide “what will be removed or filtered, or whose account will be removed on the basis of the opinion expressed within the content.”
The platform has since seen a rise in the user base of supporters of the previous U.S. President Donald Trump, conservatives, and right-wing extremists.
According to the BBC, these users first flocked to the social networking platform in June 2020, following misinformation being shared from accounts on COVID-19 and the killing of George Floyd.
This subsequently got the accounts banned by social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
Groups that support the QAnon conspiracy theory and the Proud Boys and Boogaloo Bois have also migrated to Parler, following Facebook’s ban on pages and groups that promote violence.
While it says it will not police the platform, Parler states in its guidelines that it will not “knowingly” allow people to use the platform for crime, civil torts, or other unlawful acts.
It also says that it will exclude content from the social networking website if the law requires it to—examples include terrorist organization promotion, child pornography, and copyright breaches.
How to get a Parler social networking account
If you’re keen to see the fuss surrounding the website, here is how to create an account.
To join Parler, you need to join via the website. The “create new account” button is positioned on the right of the page. Click on this button to start the process.
Clicking on the “create new account” button takes you to the registration page. Here, new users need to input their email and mobile phone number—making sure to select the correct country code—and choose a password, which must be confirmed.
Once all of this information is input, click next. Users will then be taken to the verification page, where a unique code will be sent to their mobile phone via SMS. Once the information is put into the boxes, users will move forward in the signup process.
Users can now select which accounts they would like to follow, including publications, organizations, and influencers, including politicians and pundits. Once selections are made, Parler users go to the home screen.
From the home screen, users can see content associated with hashtags and send and receive messages.
There you have it; you’ve now signed up for Parler – simple, right?
What do you think? Plan on using Parler? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
Editors’ Recommendations:
- In need of a safe space, Republicans head to the Twitter-like Parler in droves
- Due to a bug, your Twitter Fleets may be viewable past the 24-hour window
- If you absolutely need to, Instagram will let you go live for up to four hours
- Facebook doesn’t really plan on changing how it deals with Donald Trump