The free speech row tearing apart the tech community

Donald Trump’s Twitter suspension after the riot at the US Capitol made headlines around the world. What was less reported, however, was that as the then-President was suspended, so too were tens of thousands of right-wing accounts. Their social media refuge was Parler, another micro-blogging platform.

Parler markets itself as a ‘free speech-focused and unbiased alternative to mainstream social networks’. Whatever its intentions, in recent years the platform has become a cesspit of extremist content. So extreme, in fact, that Amazon banned Parler from its hosting services earlier this month. The case is now going through the courts, after Parler launched a lawsuit.

What makes Parler an interesting case is that there was initially speculation it could be hosted on the blockchain networks used by cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (although Parler has since opted for a more conventional hosting system). For the uninitiated, blockchain is a special type of computer database for cryptocurrency transactions.