An Early Look at the Parler Online Social Network
Max Aliapoulios, Emmi Bevensee, Jeremy Blackburn, Barry Bradlyn,, Emiliano De Cristofaro, Gianluca Stringhini, Savvas Zannettou

TL;DR
This paper provides a comprehensive dataset and analysis of Parler, highlighting its user dynamics, political leanings, and the impact of external endorsements and events like the US Capitol storming.
Contribution
It introduces a large-scale dataset of Parler posts and profiles, offering insights into user behavior and content themes on the platform.
Findings
Large influx of users after endorsements by public figures
Discussion dominated by conservative topics and conspiracy theories
User activity reacted to the 2020 US Presidential Election
Abstract
Parler is as an "alternative" social network promoting itself as a service that allows to "speak freely and express yourself openly, without fear of being deplatformed for your views." Because of this promise, the platform become popular among users who were suspended on mainstream social networks for violating their terms of service, as well as those fearing censorship. In particular, the service was endorsed by several conservative public figures, encouraging people to migrate from traditional social networks. After the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, Parler has been progressively deplatformed, as its app was removed from Apple/Google Play stores and the website taken down by the hosting provider. This paper presents a dataset of 183M Parler posts made by 4M users between August 2018 and January 2021, as well as metadata from 13.25M user profiles. We also present a…
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Taxonomy
TopicsMisinformation and Its Impacts · Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection · Social Media and Politics
