[46][48] The service initially attracted some Republican personalities, including then-Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, Utah Senator Mike Lee, and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, as well as some who had been banned from other social media networks, such as right-leaning activists and commentators Gavin McInnes, Laura Loomer, and Milo Yiannopoulos.

Largely supporters of Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the users migrated from Twitter after alleging they were experiencing censorship on the platform.

[55] Conservative commentator Dan Bongino announced on June 16 that he had purchased an "ownership stake" in Parler, in an effort to "fight back against" what he described as "Tech Tyrants" Facebook and Twitter.

[56] On June 24, 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump campaign was looking for alternatives to social media networks that had restricted their posts and advertising, and that Parler was being considered.

[43] Texas Senator Ted Cruz published a YouTube video on June 25, in which he denounced other social media platforms for "flagrantly silencing those with whom they disagree" and announced that he was "proud to join Parler".

[51] On October 1, 2020, Reuters reported that people associated with the Russian Internet Research Agency, a group known for their interference in the 2016 presidential election, had been operating social media accounts on both mainstream and alt-tech platforms.

One of the accounts, named Leo, identified in an FBI probe as a "key asset in an alleged Russian disinformation campaign", had been spreading "familiar and completely false" information, including claims that mail-in voting was prone to fraud, that President Trump was infected with coronavirus by leftist activists, and that Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was a "sexual predator".

[69] The Washington Post reported on October 7 that Parler had declined to terminate the account after being informed of its connections to the disinformation organization, stating they did not need to act because they had not been contacted directly by U.S. law enforcement.

[89] According to BuzzFeed News, after the riot at the Capitol, Parler had been "overrun" with death threats, encouragement of violence, and calls for Trump supporters to join another armed march on Washington, D.C. on the day before the inauguration of Joe Biden.

[28][100] On January 11, Parler sued Amazon under antitrust law, saying the suspension of services was "apparently motivated by political animus", and had been carried out with the intention of benefiting Twitter by reducing competition.

[107] On September 17, 2021, Seattle federal district Judge Barbara Rothstein approved Parler's request that its complaint against Amazon be heard in King County Superior Court.

Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told The New York Times that he was concerned about neutrality when it came to Internet infrastructure providers such as Amazon AWS and app stores.

[30] Paul Levinson, a professor at Fordham University, wrote in The Conversation that although he believed the de-platforming violated the "spirit of the First Amendment", it was warranted due to the incitement to violence on the Parler site.

[119][121] On August 27, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives select committee investigating the storming of the Capitol demanded records from Parler (alongside 14 other social media companies) going back to the spring of 2020.

[131] Parler's web hosting provider was unknown,[137] but it was noted that they were receiving protection from distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks from the Russian-owned cloud services company DDoS-Guard.

Apple added that "simple searches reveal highly objectionable content, including easily identified offensive uses of derogatory terms regarding race, religion and sexual orientation, as well as Nazi symbols" on the service.

[149][150][34] In August, Parler CEO George Farmer asked for an apology from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and others after a Reuters report said that the FBI found little evidence that the storming of the Capitol was planned and organized in advance.

[35] Also in September, Parler announced a restructuring of their platform and company that would focus on providing services to businesses that have the potential of being forced off the Internet for hosting controversial content.

[163] On April 14, 2023, digital media conglomerate Starboard announced that it had acquired Parler's parent company Parlement Technologies, and that it would temporarily shut down the social site while it prepared a revamped version.

[55] The Daily Beast noted in July and October 2020 that many high-profile conservatives who opened accounts on Parler in the previous month had since stopped using the service, while remaining active on mainstream social networks.

[7][8][9][10][11] The app also has a number of high-profile Republican users, including Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, as well as Fox News host Sean Hannity.

[22] In June 2020, Matze said he wanted to see more debate on the platform and offered a "progressive bounty" of $10,000 to liberal pundits with at least 50,000 Twitter or Facebook followers who would join; receiving no takers, he later increased this amount to $20,000.

"[14] In December 2020, the Houston Chronicle argued that "Beneath the thin guise of the app’s self-proclaimed emphasis on 'free speech' lies the ability to say not just a hypothetical 'anything,' but specifically to share racist slurs and violent threats toward political opponents.

"[61] The service has been popular among conservatives who allege Twitter and Facebook has been biased against them when moderating content or flagging misinformation, praising Parler for offering an alternative to these mainstream platforms.

[56][21][22][201] [excessive citations]Parler's guidelines disallow content including blackmail, support for terrorism, false rumors, promoting marijuana, and "fighting words" directed towards others.

[21] The Independent wrote in November 2020, "Despite positioning itself as a libertarian platform promoting freedom of expression, Parler's community guidelines are more than 1,500 words and include rules that go far beyond legal requirements.

[30] In January 2021, Parler executives acknowledged that rules-violating content had remained on the platform, which they attributed to their volunteer team of moderators being overwhelmed by large backlogs of posts to review.

Parler's chief of policy, Amy Peikoff, told The Wall Street Journal she had directed moderators to report such threats to law enforcement, and that she "was concerned that there was actually going to be some sort of violence on the 6th".

[45] In a memo Matze sent to Fox Business, he claimed that "I did not participate in this decision" to terminate him and that he had "met constant resistance to [his] product vision, [his] strong belief in free speech and [his] view of how the Parler site should be managed".

[39] In a June 27, 2020, interview with CNBC, Matze said he wanted to raise an institutional round of financing soon, although he expressed concerns that venture capitalists might not be interested in funding the company because of ideological differences.