Huh.

Parler jumps to No. 1 on App Store after Facebook and Twitter ban Trump

Parler saw approximately 210,000 installs globally on Friday 1/8, up 281% from approximately 55,000 on 1/7, according to data from the analytics service Sensor Tower. “In the U.S., the app saw approximately 182,000 first-time downloads on 1/8, up 355% from about 40,000 installs on 1/7. Since Wednesday, the app has seen approximately 268,000 installs from across U.S. app stores,” a press rep from Sensor Tower wrote in an email.

I have avoided all social media chatterbox applications like the freakin’ plague, so I’m unclear on how a lot of this works. It has been removed from Googles Play Store and will likely soon be removed from Apples app store. Will this make it unavailable to existing Parler users? Or can they still access it through normal web browsers? I dunno. But it seems to me the most likely outcome is that Big Tech will find a way to either stomp Parler out of existence or force it to adopt terms of service that turn it bland, uninteresting and exclusionary, which would just as effectively kill it. I’ve little doubt that Parler can be taken down by big tech by any of a number of means from throttling access to threatening payment processors and banks and the like.

Conservatives, others claim Twitter removed thousands of followers

It *seems* that tens or even hundreds of thousands of conservative Twitter users have vanished. Hard to tell how much of that comes from a mass banning of people on the right by the left-leaning leadership of Twitter, and how much of it comes from right-leaning Twitter users deciding to bail. In either event, Twitter will now become even more of a left-wing echo chamber, continuing to further radicalize its leftist users. Whether there will be an equivalent right-wing echo chamber in terms of scope and permissiveness remains to be seen.