Parler / WIRED
In the days before Parler went offline, its members raged. The number of posts using terms such as civil war, insurrection and rebellion soared while mentions of the Proud Boys – a far-right, neo-fascist, male-only extremist group, also increased dramatically. Parler data analysed by WIRED reveals that the mentions of such terms rose from just 858 instances on January 1 to 3,261 at their peak on January 9 – an increase of 280 per cent.
The data, pulled from Parler in the hours before it went offline by Junkipedia, a disinformation analysis tool, reveals a surge in activity on the site in the days surrounding the storming of the US Capitol. Between January 1 and January 10, the day that Parler went offline, posts mentioning terms such as civil war and insurrection received more than 212,500 total interactions (likes, comments and shares) and were seen by an audience of more than four million people. At its peak on January 6 such posts on Parler were viewed by mor