I had no intention of ever using Parler because I hated Twitter and never really understood why anyone used it... but what you said above about how we wouldn't even know about it if not for the controversy surrounding it, I think, is absolutely true.
Diversifying the marketplace is a win/win in my mind as well. Now if we could just convince a few of those people to come over here... right?
I don't know who was responsible but there were a few kind of big names that joined us on that "other" site that we spawned from, but their posts were just reposts of what they were doing on IG and FB and I suppose that is fine - if only a few of them would get over here I think it could be great for HIVE.