Unhappy conservatives shift away from Facebook and Twitter
Corey Adam, a political comedian from Minneapolis, joined a mass social media switch lastweek.
That was when the conservative and libertarian watched Twitter and Facebook add labels to social media posts from President Donald Trump and other Republicans who falsely claimed he had won the election. Many of the labels said the assertions were disputed. And on Twitter, some of Trump’s tweets were hidden completely.
To Adam, 39, the social media companies appeared to be singling out conservative voices. So he decided to shift to Parler, a social networking app that he has used on and off for a year.
“Facebook started muting, deleting and labeling every conservative political post inmy feed,” Adam said. “If you’re going to do something, you have to be fair to both sides.”
Adam was one of millions of people who have migrated from Facebook and Twitter since the election. As the companies have clamped down on misinformation, they have clashed with Republicans and conservatives who have spread lies about the election’s outcome, leading to claims that the tech platforms are censoring them.
Among those who have spoken out are Mark Levin, a far-right radio host with millions of listeners, who vented on his show last week that the tech and media companies were not representing the conservative point of view. Maria Bartiromo, a Fox News anchor, also expressed frustration with Twitter and said it was blocking conservatives’ statements.
But Levin, Bartiromo and others did not stop there. They directed their followers to other social media apps and news sites that have positioned themselves as alternatives to Facebook and Twitter. The beneficiaries are Parler, a Twitter-like app that describes itself as the world’s “premier free speech social network”; the right-wing media app Newsmax; and other social sites like MeWe and Rumble, which have purposely welcomed conservatives.
Last weekend, Parler shot to the top of Apple’s App Store in downloads. As of Monday, it had 8 million members, nearly double the 4.5 million it had last week. Rumble said it projected 75 million to 90 million people will watch a video on its site this month, up from 60.5 million last month. And Newsmax said that more than 3 million people watched its election night coverage and that its app has recently been in the top 10 daily apps downloaded from the App Store.
Facebook and Twitter declined to comment. The companies have denied censoring conservatives and typically point to their terms of service when an account breaks the rules. And while many conservatives are upset about their content being labeled or hidden, they are less willing to acknowledge that their posts can often clash with Facebook’s guidelines around disinformation and harmful content.
Nextweek, Twitter’s chief executive, Jack Dorsey, and Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, are scheduled to testify at a congressional hearing over their sites’ treatment of an unsubstantiated New York Post article that was critical of Hunter Biden, the son of President-elect Joe Biden. The hearing was called by Republicans who were incensed that the sites initially limited the distribution of the article.
Despite the conservative ire, Facebook and Twitter have long taken a mostly hands-off approach to digital speech. In recent months, however, the companies ramped up their efforts to prevent election misinformation. Facebook and Twitter said they would label false posts and slow down how quickly they could be shared, among other moves. They said many of the changes would be temporary.
Last week after the polls closed, Facebook and Twitter began using many of those measures. When Trump posted that the election was being stolen from him, the companies labeled his messages. Facebook on Thursday also took down a rapidly growing Facebook group, Stop the Steal, which promoted the idea of a stolen election.
That moved people like Adam to switch to alternative apps like Parler, which is owned in part by conservative media personality Dan Bongino. Foundedin 2018by two Nevada-based software engineers, John Matze and Jared Thomson, Parler — which is named after the French word meaning “to speak” — has said it is a free speech platform with much looser guidelines around what people can post to the site.
On Parler, users can see posts about MAGA fodder and QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory that asserts that some top Democrats are satanic pedophiles. Anti- Semitic theories abound. Donald Trump Jr.; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, all have Parler accounts.
Many people have also sought out further-right news publications. That has been a boon for Newsmax, a right-wing news website and television channel founded in 1998 by conservative journalist Christopher Ruddy. Lastweek, Newsmax gained steam after Fox News called the swing state of Arizona in favor of Biden, incensing Trump’s base. (The New York Times has not called Arizona in favor of either candidate.)
Melissa Zepeda, 32, a Republican and a registered nurse in Tupelo, Mississippi, said she and several of her co-workers recently switched to Newsmax from Fox News after it showed “favoritism to Biden.” Newsmax has not called the election in favor of Biden, oneof the few news outlets not to do so.
“So far, I like that they are nonbiased and cover a variety of information, not just the election,” Zepeda said.
Ruddy, Newsmax’s chief executive and a confidant of Trump’s, said viewership and social media interactions with his site have soared. The surge came partly from conservatives who were searching for a place where their opinions are represented, he said. He added that it was important for publishers to have ideological diversity.
“There’s a liberal echo chamber that’s pretty damn big,” he said. “Conservatives just have less options, but if they seek them out, they’re there.”
It might be too early to know whether a widespread, permanent shift away from major outlets will last, especially given the reach of Facebook, Twitter and Fox News. While conservative threats of mass migration away from mainstream apps and news have occurred periodically, people still seem to return to the biggest platforms.