Facebook seems to be presenting a “Catch-22” for conservatives who are fed up with censorship: In order to leave Facebook yet let contacts know how to find them, they must risk Facebook’s censorship to let those contacts know.
Project Veritas has often documented Facebook’s bias against conservatives and its deletions of their posts.
Some who say they are tired of that bias are trying microblogging/social networking site Parler. They say they see Parler as a free-speech alternative to Twitter. Forbes in June ran an interview with Parler founder John Matze and how the site has grown to be a conservative presence in only two years.
An increased influx of users to Parler apparently created hiccups over the weekend.
Parler posted, “Apologies for all of the glitches. The rest of this evening will likely continue to be bumpy. It’s one thing after another breaking. We planned for growth over the last few days but we are breaking all our most optimistic growth numbers. Hang on!”
At least one large Facebook “event” encouraging people to leave the social media giant seems to have disappeared suddenly during the weekend. The event was called “Mass exit off Facebook 11/13/20” and encouraged people upset over censorship to use Parler.
A Parler user going by Rally Girl Val purported to have been the event sponsor. She posted a screenshot that showed 799,000 interested and 131,000 going.
Her profile says, “I was on Facebook as The Conservative Rally Girl Val until they shut me down at 10k followers. Max exodus off Facebook to Parler to continue my freedom of speech. #MAGA #KAG”.
A different Facebook exodus event with the same name as the deleted event had only a couple of hundred responses as of Sunday evening. It encourages people to try Parler or MeWe.
Other similar events have popped up. The common date for many seem to be Friday, Nov. 13.
One of those alternative events is called “Mass exit off FaceBook to Parler dot com …. November 13th!” More than 44,000 people had expressed interest and 6,400 said they were going as of Sunday evening.
Lisa Defriece of Cleveland, Tennessee, is one of the people who showed interest in that event. She told The Tennessee Star she has been on Facebook for at least 11 years, but the site has lost its enjoyment.
It used to be an uplifting site that I truly enjoyed. I enjoyed keeping up with family and friends. There’s so much negativity and political agendas that it takes the enjoyment out of being on FB. I absolutely want to check out PARLER to see if this is a site I will once again enjoy. I will keep FB open until I can see if Parler has the same agendas. Since most of us have FB now days, I feel the negativity is affecting all us. Seems it has become no different than the news media with all of their negativity. At this point we all have freedom of speech…I feel the news media and FB is slowly taking that away. Definitely trying to control what is going on around us.
Landon Wehrung of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, told The Star he follows conservative pundits online, which is harder during election season because their work does not readily appear on Google or Facebook. He cited Libertarian pundit John Stossel as one public figure who has to use emails to connect with followers as a result of Big Tech censorship.
Wehrung said he has followed the exodus talk but likely will not drop Facebook, although he is interested in checking out Parler.
“I think there needs to be other social media out there that don’t have the biases … of Facebook and Twitter and Google and You Tube,” Wehrung said. “Parler seems to be the next best thing right now.”
Some conservative Facebook users have not waited for events to tell others they are at least trying Parler. Instead, they have simply posted their Parler handle on Facebook.
North Carolina State Sen. Ralph Hise (R-N.C.-47) is one of the Facebook users making plans to at least have a Parler presence. On Saturday, he posted his new Parler handle on his Facebook account: @SenHise47.
Facebook is not the only social media site to have users talking about leaving.
Fox Business News host Maria Bartiromo said she was leaving Twitter for Parler, Newsweek reported.
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Jason M. Reynolds has more than 20 years’ experience as a journalist at outlets of all sizes.
