A lead researcher for technology condemned conservatives for doing what many on the left have told conservatives to do — join a new social media platform. And she used CNN to do it.
Political ads lead researcher Bridget Barrett seemed disgusted by the fact conservatives have any safe-haven online to share their ideas. She joined CNN in an interview Nov. 15. Her comments in the interview demonstrate that liberals don’t care about conservatives’ rights to free speech, but merely want those views to be silenced. CNN anchor Michael Holmes began with a leading question about how Parler constitutes an “echo chamber” and asked “what are the risks in that?” Barrett responded by panicking over how Parler will enable “the spread of hate, of false information” and “terrorists, both foreign and domestic to recruit or plan.”
Barrett also warned that Parler could cause “harms” to “our democracy” itself:
“[I]f you allow a space where none of these claims are going to be countered, that people are going to believe that an election was unfair or illegitimate when every valid and legitimate source has been clear that this was one of the best run elections that we’ve had in years.”
But conservatives concerned about free speech are abandoning Twitter for good reason.
Twitter has a reputation for moderating posts based on political biases rather than objective truth, however. Twitter banned feminist Meghan Murphy’s account for tweeting such statements as “Women aren’t men” and “How are transwomen not men? What is the difference between a man and a transwoman?”
While Parler is nowhere near the size of censorious Big Tech establishment platforms, its rise to popularity has accelerated as censorship has grown worse on Facebook and Twitter.
In an interview with Mornings with Maria on Fox Business, Parler CEO John Matze described his website’s appeal: “I think people are really just fed up with what’s going on on Twitter and Facebook and these other places that are really cracking down and trying to just interfere, I guess, with what people are trying to talk about during this time.” The platform’s Community Guidelines have explained, “While the First Amendment does not apply to private companies such as Parler, our mission is to create a social platform in the spirit of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
Parler “was the most downloaded app on both Android and Apple devices for most of last week, according to data from Google and analytics firm App Annie,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Rebekah Mercer, daughter of conservative mega donor Robert Mercer, is among the company’s financial investors. Mercer said in a post that she and Matze “started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech, as our founders intended.” She later added that this enterprise was made in response to “ever increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords.”
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your local representative and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us at the Media Research Center contact form and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
