In the culture wars in the U.S., Twitter Inc. has often been targeted thanks to limiting content and also not limiting content, the latter specifically tweets from President Donald Trump. Some accuse Twitter of having a left-wing bias in banning accounts from those on the right of politics, most recently Carpe Donktum, a conservative who is best known for posting pro-Trump memes.

Various attempts have been made over the years to establish alternatives to Twitter, often with a free speech focus, such as Gab in 2016, but it never took off. Now a newer player in the field — Parler, launched in 2018 — is surging in popularity amid the culture wars and accusations of bias against Twitter. The site is said to have increased its user base by 50% to 1.5 million users in the last week, primarily driven by conservatives looking for Twitter alternatives.

Parler offers a hybrid free speech platform with limitations. While not banning political speech, Parler will ban users when they break U.S. law such as inciting violence.

Despite attempts by some to label it as far-right, Parler, which in the last week has topped free app download charts on both iOS and Android, has attracted somewhat of a mixed audience. While it can be said to have a right-leaning bias so far it has also attracted those on the left, particularly so-called trans-exclusionary radical feminists, “radfems” and others who are seeking an alternative to Twitter. Notably among users of Parler are Senator Ted Cruz and former U.S. representative and presidential candidate Ron Paul.

Signing up to Parler is easy enough. A phone number is required, with two-factor authentication sent by SMS text to complete the process.

Parler looks like Twitter be it with a different color scheme and different terms. A retweet or a share is called an “echo,” while loving a post is a vote similar to Reddit. Anyone who has used Twitter or Facebook will easily get Parler’s setup.

That said, there are some issues with the service. On the user experience side, there’s no recommendation engine to suggest users people should follow when joining. That means you have to seek out people to follow.

The biggest issue, though, is that the site and its app are buggy. The Android app occasionally crashes for no obvious reason. Perhaps because of growing pains, logging in through a web browser can take time. For nearly a minute while writing this review, I was stuck waiting for a captcha to log into my account.

Whether Parler can be successful or not depends on a range of issues. The basics are certainly there, but it needs to do more to scale up without issues and that’s where it appears to be having issues.

Their ultimate success may not be in their hands alone, however. There’s speculation that President Trump may join the service in favor of Twitter. If it’s having growing pains now with an increased user base, it’s going to have a lot more if Trump joins.

Images: Parler