Parler Alerted FBI before Before the January 6, Capitol Riot

Big Tech used Parler as a scapegoat to destroy a startup company that was a viable threat to their social media dominance.

According to a report published in the Wall Street Journal, Parler said it had alerted the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation about violent content on its platform and specific threats against the Capitol more than 50 times in the weeks before the Jan. 6 riot, which left five people dead and hundreds injured.

Parler in December began alerting the bureau to content suggesting the possibility of violence at the Capitol as Congress met to confirm President Biden’s victory, the company wrote in a letter to the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which is investigating Parler and its role in the siege.

A person on Parler “called for the congregation of an armed force of 150,000” on that date, when Congress was to certify the Electoral College victory of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election.

Parler said a user claimed that the planned event on Jan. 6 was “no longer a protest” but was “the final stand where we are drawing the red line at Capitol Hill.” The same user added in a later post that “Trump needs us to cause chaos to enact the #insurrectionact.” Still another user posted a picture of Hillary Clinton behind a noose.

Parler has been under fire for months over its handling of extremism on its platform.

Internet Accountability Project (IAP) President Mike Davis summed up the situation well.

“When Twitter targets conservatives – including President Trump – Big Tech shills tell us to ‘build our own Twitter.’ So Parler did. Then trillion-dollar monopolists Google and Apple – running their duopoly/cartel – kicked Parler out of the app stores. Then trillion-dollar monopolist Amazon kicked Parler off the internet,” Davis recounted.
The stated reason for Google, Amazon, and Apple’s anticompetitive conspiracy was that Parler promoted the violence at the January 6th protests at the Capitol. But we’ve learned today that was a bogus, pretextual excuse by three trillion-dollar Big Tech monopolists (Google, Apple, and Amazon) to kill a competitor of Twitter (another Big Tech monopolist),” Davis declared. “Indeed, we now know that in the days and weeks leading up to January 6th, Parler made over 50 referrals of violent content to the FBI, including specific threats of violence being planned at the Capitol.”
“Now we know the truth, which is Big Tech used Parler as a scapegoat to destroy a startup company that was a viable threat to their social media dominance,” the IAP president concluded.

While Parler withdrew its original January federal lawsuit against Amazon, it filed a new lawsuit in Washington State court, alleging defamation and breach of contract.

Former President Donald Trump has announced he will launch his own social media platform, which will apparently compete with Twitter and Facebook, as well as conservative alternatives like Gab and Parler.