Parler says it will be a free speech hub in the midterm elections amid efforts by Big Tech companies to combat misinformation.
The alternative social network has postured itself as a “viewpoint-neutral, free speech” website. While many Big Tech companies have increased their efforts to combat the spread of false information related to the 2022 midterm elections, Parler has adopted a hands-off approach and allows users to post as they like.
Parler’s team argues that the extra efforts from platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to manage what their users see do not reflect well on their users. “Maybe people on the other platforms have become intellectually lazy, where they have expected the platform to do their thinking for them,” Amy Peikoff, Parler’s chief policy officer, told the Washington Examiner. “[Users are] outsourcing their critical thinking to these platforms, to these employees in Silicon Valley. On Parler, we don’t do that.”
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The company promised “freedom from censorship” in a press release announcing its election policies, emphasizing that it would allow all legal speech rather than suppressing content via algorithm.
While Parler intends to provide a news feed that will update users on developments in the 2022 midterm elections, it does not intend to hold the hands of users. At the most, “we might put out a PSA, just reminding people that we’re unlike other platforms in that we actually expect them to do their own critical thinking and to remind them that just because it appears online doesn’t mean it’s true,” Peikoff added.
Peikoff also emphasized that the platform will not intervene if a user posts false information there, but it will intervene if an account encourages violence, hate speech, or fraud. “We don’t remove any content based on viewpoint or on the content of the view expressed unless you’re talking about something that is inciteful in nature, violent in nature, fraudulent in nature, where it’s actually a provable fraud,” Peikoff said.
Parler does have policies that allow it to verify whether a user’s claimed identity is authentic and has acted when others attempted to impersonate notable people. Peikoff mentioned a recent case in which Parler found an account impersonating an orthopedic surgeon and offering COVID-19-related telemedicine consultations. Once the account was reported, Parler reached out to the office of the actual doctor, informed them of the attempted impersonation, and banned the account after confirming it was not real.
Parler was removed from both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store in Jan. 2021 after posts from several people involved in the Jan. 6 riots were found on Parler by researchers. Parler was allowed back onto Apple in May 2021 after updating its content moderation policies, but it did not refile to be allowed back onto Android devices for several months. Parler delayed refiling because it knew it could provide the app to Android users via “sideloading,” or having them download the app to their device directly from the company, rather than relying on a digital store such as Google Play, according to Peikoff.
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In order to get accepted, the company had to amend its content moderation standards to account for offensive content. This included restricting certain forms of content appearing on the Android app, including sexually explicit or select political topics like the 2020 elections. If a post appears on the platform that breaches the Google Play Store’s content moderation policy, Parler said that they would not remove it. Instead, they would make the post inaccessible on Android and tell users that they could access the content through the web version of Parler.
Parler’s decision arrived after other social platforms announced that they were incorporating policies to handle misinformation. Google announced on Sept. 1 that it was implementing changes to its search results to reflect accurate election information better. Twitter announced on Aug. 11 that it was incorporating unique labels for candidates and releasing “pre-bunks” to combat potential misinformation. TikTok announced its election center on Aug. 17, which will help the video social platform track and monitor the promotion of political content. Meta also said that it was taking actions to stop any potential election or voter interference.
