Explainer: What is Parler, and why does it matter?

In recent months, a new social media platform gained growing popularity in light of controversies over content moderation and fact-checking on traditional social media sites like Twitter and Facebook. Parler was launched in August of 2018 by John Matze, Jared Thomson, and Rebekah Mercer. While it still has a smaller user base than most social platforms at just over 2.8 millions people, the app saw a surge in downloads following the November 2020 presidential election and has become extremely...