What is Locals and Parler?
2020-08-08
I wanted to do a short summary about recently emerged social sites in the USA. I say the USA and not the world, because they are both politically motivated, and that can be a deciding factor, if you want to try them out.
Locals
Locals is the fresher one. It was founded by Dave Rubin, an American political commentator. Mostly because of how youtube and twitter deplatform some of its users.
Locals itself is a community website where the owners of community pages can make money by charging for membership. It can be very nice for people who want to have a tight community. Right now you can only use credit or debit card for paying. You can give any amount if you want, but the minimum is $5.
I have deleted my account, as I don't see myself to be active enough on it, to support anyone on it.
Do I recommend Locals? Depends. If you want to be active and give people money, see and comment what other's are saying, this social media site can be good for you.
Parler
Parler is a little bit more straightforward. While the recent purge of conservatives on Twitter made others to switch social media, Parler is nothing new, it's 2 years old.
The site has mostly conservatives and/or moderate people on it. It's decentralized, which is not bad itself if you want to talk about mostly one thing. Which in return will create an echo chamber.
It has some controversial thing going on, like you need to give your phone number to them (note: Twitter also does this to new users), and if the site is getting into legal trouble, you will pay for it (I don't know if it's still exist though).
It is basically a Twitter replacement. Except the website is clunky, slow and confusing. I have a feeling that it was an afterthought and the mobile app version is better. I couldn't test this theory as I don't have a smartphone.
As for the people: it's American centric, and you need to use search to find other topics than politics. Incredible boring to be honest, and probably will make people depressed in the long run. I have deleted my account yesterday, because now they have an option for deleting accounts.
Do I recommend Parler? No.
This was day 45 of #100DaysToOffload, where we write about different things on our personal blogs. Join the project or just read the blogs (we have RSS and coookiez!).