Global civil society organisation Access Now addressed an open letter to social media platform Parler calling for transparency on how its policies affect human rights. The letter draws particular attention to policies to address disinformation, misinformation, hate speech, and other practices that impede informed discourse and public safety.

Stressing the importance of fighting disinformation and misinformation in defending the right to free expression, Access Now highlights the efforts of other social media platforms to limit the spread of such speech throughout the 2020 US election and its aftermath, and the significance for Parler to do the same.

“Parler is growing exponentially, but it provides little information on how it protects and respects users’ data and rights, or how it fights potentially deadly disinformation, hate speech, or the targeting of individuals,” said Isedua Oribhabor, U.S. Policy Analyst at Access Now. “The role that Parler played in enabling the events in the U.S. Capitol only underscores the urgency for the company to uphold its own supposed commitment to transparency. We challenge the social media platform to make its policies public, and it should place human rights and open discourse at its core.”

We invited Parler to respond to the call for more transparency on its policies and their impact on human rights; it did not.