Embattled right-wing social media firm Parler infamously promises its users a
laissez-faire approach to "free speech" on its service. As the company now tells Congress, however, Parler apparently does warn federal authorities when it discovers certain kinds of violent content on its platform—and users who flock to the site for its anything-goes attitude are mad.
Parler's attorneys explained in a letter (
PDF) to the House Oversight Committee that it apparently does have limits on what it finds acceptable and
did take seriously some of the violent content posted to its platform ahead of the January 6 events at the US Capitol.
Parler "has acted to remove incitement and threats of violence from its platform and did so numerous times in the days before the unlawful rioting at the Capitol," the letter explains. It goes on:
As Parler grew substantially in the latter half of 2020, the company took the extraordinary initiative to develop formal lines of communication with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to facilitate proactive cooperation and referrals of violent threats and incitement to law enforcement. In fact, in the days and weeks leading up to January 6th, Parler referred violent content from its platform to the FBI for investigation over 50 times, and Parler even alerted law enforcement to specific threats of violence being planned at the Capitol.
"Today," Parler adds, it "continues to work closely with law enforcement, and the company has also implemented enhanced processes and procedures with the assistance of artificial intelligence, computerized filters, and manual reviews to better screen and remove incitement from the platform."
Parler alleges in the letter that it began to reach out to the FBI about "alarming content that included specific threats of organized violence at the US Capitol" as early as December 24, including a post from a user who explicitly called for an armed force of 150,000 to gather to "react to" what Congress did that day.
On January 2, Parler said, it likewise forwarded to the FBI a series of posts from a user writing that the planned event on January 6 "is not a rally and it's no longer a protest. This is the final stand... I trust the American people will take back the USA with force and many are ready to die."
