Parler, Twitter’s Free Speech-Focused Competitor, Sees Momentum Stall

Parler, the two-year-old social platform aiming to be a free speech haven for disenchanted Twitter users, has seen it’s growth dramatically slow down over the last few weeks, according to data Sensor Tower shared with TheWrap.

The platform’s popularity and notoriety soared in June, after a number of right-leaning politicians and pundits, including Sen. Ted Cruz and Sean Hannity, signed up and started posting, or parleying, messages. Parler is available to anyone, but it has been embraced primarily by conservatives and independents who aren’t fans of Twitter and Facebook’s moderation policies. President Trump’s campaign, most notably, has looked at Parler as a potential alternative to the mainstays when it comes to building a new audience.

That wave of publicity brought on by the president and other top right-wing voices was a boon to Parler, with the app’s downloads surging in mid-June. After only 21,000 downloads across the Apple App Store and Google Play store the week of June 8, Parler’s downloads jumped more than 470% in the two weeks that followed. By the last week of June, Parler had back-to-back weeks of more than 700,000 downloads, according to Sensor Tower. The spike in downloads also coincided with Twitter banning popular pro-Trump meme maker Carpe Donktum.

July hasn’t been as kind, however. Parler’s app downloads dropped 75% to 190,000 overall for the week of July 6; the following week saw another 39% drop to 116,000 total downloads, according to Sensor Tower.

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*(Parler’s June-July performance, including week-over-week download growth in parenthesis.) *

Parler did not respond to multiple requests for comment on its downloads or user base.

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Sensor Tower estimates Parler has been downloaded 2.6 million times since it launched. It’s worth pointing out that doesn’t include users who sign up and use the platform exclusively via their computer. From June 26 to June 30, Parler was the top-ranked news app in the App Store, and stayed in the top-10 through July 13, per Sensor Tower.

As Twitter has been increasingly proactive in moderating content, including adding fact check notifications and warning labels to the president’s tweets, Parler has looked to position itself as the anti-Twitter. Parler’s App Store self-description — that it’s a “non-based, free speech social media” platform — is telling. While larger platforms look to weed out “hate speech,” Parler’s view is that more speech, not less, is the best solution.

“The best thing is for everyone to engage with a bad idea and shut it down through public discourse,” 27-year-old Parler founder John Matze recently told Forbes.

He later added: “There are going to be no fact checkers. You’re not going to be told what to think and what to say. A police officer isn’t going to arrest you if you say the wrong opinion.”

Matze’s message looks to have resonated with a number of leading conservative voices, although some have committed to Parler more than others.

Hannity, for instance, has sent 184 parleys to his 238,000 followers in his first 28 days on Parler — averaging out to about 6-7 messages sent per day. Former Fox News host Trish Regan, meanwhile, has sent 23 parleys in her first 16 days; Cruz, who has more than 700,000, followers on the app, has sent 20 parleys since joining in early June.

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Parler isn’t just for conservatives, though. The Krassenstein brothers, who rose to fame on Twitter for their brand of anti-Trump resistance — and were later kicked off for operating fake accounts — have reemerged on Parler. Several other Twitter exiles can be found on Parler.

The odds Parler usurps Twitter are long, just like any other social media startup. Right now, it’s a niche service that mostly caters to conservatives who are worried about tech censorship. (That’s not to say Parler has no rules. The platform’s community guidelines prohibit “fighting words or threats to harm,” terrorist organizations, and pornography — although it isn’t too hard to stumble across porn within 5 minutes of signing up.) But as Stephen L. Miller recently wrote for The Spectator, Twitter has one key factor going for it that Parler doesn’t: it’s a news driver. What makes the news often hits Twitter first, and seemingly every journalist in the business has an account.

“Without that core aspect of what Twitter is, what you’re left with is a bunch of people standing around a water-cooler searching for something to talk about,” Miller wrote. “Some might promote their own media ventures and YouTube shows, but they don’t really need a fledgling social media platform for that.”

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