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Alex Newhouse at The Conversation observes that Parler's popularity exploded after the election, doubling its membership to 10 million users in November alone. The app was one of Apple's top downloads. However, Gizmodo also reports that the spike was short-lived, with downloads sharply declining in December.

There have been several attempts to create a "total free speech" platform hospitable to right-wing hate speech, most memorably Gab. None have succeeded so far, for several clear reasons beyond simply being wonky and unwieldy interfaces: for starters, the platforms attracted violent extremists such as Pittsburgh killer Robert Bowers, who openly planned and discussed their killing sprees there; for another, their relatively small sizes made them into ideological echo chambers with very little reach or impact. Gab in particular became known as White Nationalist Central and nothing else.

In contrast, Parler attracted a number of high-profile early adopters from the Trumpian right's supposed mainstream--people like Candace Owens, Brad Parscale, and Sean Hannity, who were soon followed by elected Republican officials such as Senator Mike Lee of Utah, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Congressman Devin Nunes of California, as well as White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. Its user base remained tiny--fewer than a million--until early 2020.

The rush to Parler became intense during the post-election period, particularly as Twitter and Facebook attempted to crack down on the spread of misinformation about the election, primarily emanating from conspiracist "Stop the Steal" movement. As those platforms began banning groups disseminating false election claims, they all began setting up camp at Parler, and drawing large numbers of participants along the way. Still, even at 10 million users, it is dwarfed by Twitter and its estimated 330 million users.

The worldview on Parler is a conspiracist alternative universe: Trump won in a landslide, but the victory was stolen by a wide-ranging alliance of evildoers, ranging from ballot-counting software companies to a host of Democrats and, of course, the "deep state."

Most of all, it has become the social-media home of a variety of unabashed white supremacists, anti-Semites, and raging misogynists, many of whose contributions are monitored by the Twitter account Fascist Parler Watch. 

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