Within hours of the protesters being expelled from the Capitol on Wednesday, there was already discussion about what would happen next on Parler and Gab, another social media platform that became popular with the far right.
Trump was expected to take his megaphone to the platforms, and tens of thousands joined those locations waiting for him to land there. But on Monday night, Parler was virtually offline. Gab had also become largely unusable, as a flood of new users and downloads seemed to overwhelm the site, making it impossible to search or post new items.
Some groups have moved to smaller sites, like MeWe and CloutHub, as well as marginal message boards.
“There is a massive exodus that is taking place and we are really seeing people spreading to different places in search of a home,” said Argentino. “Different groups have established themselves in different places.”
On Telegram, where members of the Proud Boys and other militia groups feature popular channels, there were calls for people to organize marches in state capitol buildings on Saturday (January 16). On a Telegram channel, which has more than 20,000 followers, the addresses of these buildings were posted, as well as the addresses of technology companies, including Facebook, Twitter, Apple and Google.
Members of the Boogaloo movement, another far-right group, also organized Telegram and Signal for rallies on Sunday (17 January). At 4chan and other message groups, pamphlets were posted asking for another march in Washington, DC, on January 20. In comments on these posts, people expressed their support for targeting various news organizations, such as The New York Times and CNN.
Andrew Torba, Gab’s chief executive, said: “As we communicate to our law enforcement partners, we have adopted an enhanced security posture before taking office and are ready to respond quickly to any requests that the police may make from us during the period . “