Welcome to another week, Lucinda Southern, Adweek media editor here, hoping you had a restful weekend.
As social media platforms fall over themselves to look like they are making a stand against spreading misinformation, a flurry of Fox news anchors, Trump campaigners and notable Republicans are fleeing to another social network.
Parler (for the French “to speak”) has seen serious user spikes, doubling from roughly 4.5 million members last week to about 8 million. Some of those notables include Fox News host Sean Hannity and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Some are signing up after feeling that the moves of mainstream social networks to thwart misinformation are biased to conservatives and threaten free speech.
My colleague David Cohen spoke with the company and media analysts to get a sense of the platform’s future (and, as yet, its fledgling business case).
With user privacy at the top of digital media’s mind, lobbyists are steering lawmakers away from a patchwork of state-led user privacy laws (like CCPA 2.0). Instead, trade bodies like the 4A’s, ANA, and IAB are pushing for initiatives like Privacy for America. Read on from my colleague Ronan Shields about how the ad industry is lobbying for federal user privacy laws.
One more before you go, in case you didn’t get to see the details of The Four Seasons’ merch line after that press conference.
And with that, think about supporting our journalism with an Adweek Pro Subscription.
Thanks for reading and have a great start to the week.
Lucinda.
