Take back your content

As of the time of this writing, many people (primarily conservatives) are looking to leave Facebook and move their account over to Parler, the “free speech social network”. I’ve seen quite a few friends “leave” Facebook for Parler, but then they keep posting new stuff on Facebook. Interpret that how you will.

Parler may or may not turn out to be a worthwhile site in the long run, but I think for most people it’s the wrong decision. There are two main reasons why:

1. “no censorship”

Parler billed itself as having no censorship, but they had to change that pretty quickly. There are legal issues to avoid (nudity, etc) but also other things they’ve had to fight back against (photos of fecal matter, death threats, etc) — things worth banning, but starting down the road to increased censorship.

Even worse, moderators that block content aren’t just “the man” blocking your speech — it’s a truly awful job to have, as shown in this story from The Verge last year. Parler may have a different angle on how they censor certain political posts, but censorship is a necessary thing that they’ll need to learn how to handle.

2. $$$

Longer term, money will be a problem. Parler has some rough monetization plans, but it gets tricky very quickly. It costs a typical social media site roughly $10–17 per user, per year to cover their costs. If Parler were to grow to say 27 million users (just 1% the size of Facebook) their costs would be somewhere around…