What is Parler, and why is everyone suddenly talking about it?

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Hundreds of millions of Americans-and our counterparts worldwide-watched the US election and its high-drama aftermath unfold on social media over the past week or so. Most of us were using Facebook or Twitter, but in the immediate wake of Election Day, a new social media platform suddenly rocketed to the top of the app download charts: Parler.

Conservative politicians, such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), have been evangelizing Parler to their followers for more than a year and have been joined by right-wing media personalities. Conservatives have now redoubled their efforts to evade "censorship," as Twitter works overtime to fact-check false claims about the election.

What is Parler?

Parler is a Twitter-style social media platform that first launched in 2018. As with Twitter, it's built around a newsfeed of accounts you can choose to follow, and users can upload images in addition to creating posts of up to 1,000 characters (Twitter caps posts at 280). In addition to being available by Web, Parler has both iOS and Android apps available.

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