The musician who used to be known as Kanye West has been banned from posting on Twitter and Instagram for making anti-Semitic comments. Now, he is trying to buy the right-wing social network Parler.
Soon after being barred from Twitter and Instagram for making anti-Semitic remarks, the musician formerly known as Kanye West offers to buy the right-wing social network Parler.
With the acquisition of Parler, West, who is known legally as Ye, would gain control of a social media platform and a fresh, unrestricted venue for his thoughts.
The platform’s owner, Parlement Technologies, and West stated that the deal should close in the fourth quarter but did not provide specifics like the purchase price. According to Parlement Technologies, the agreement covers the use of private cloud services provided by Parlement’s data centre and private cloud architecture.
Since last week, Ye has been prohibited from posting on Twitter and Instagram due to antisemitic comments that the social media platforms said breached their regulations. According to internet archive records, Ye made an allusion to the U.S. defense readiness status scale known as DEFCON in a tweet where he stated that he would soon “death con 3 on Jewish people.”
Ye is no stranger to controversy; in the past, he has called the COVID-19 vaccine “the mark of the beast” and suggested that slavery was a choice. Earlier this month, he was criticized for showing his collection at Paris Fashion Week while wearing a T-shirt that said “White Lives Matter.”
Ye stated in a prepared statement, “We have to make sure we have the right to openly express ourselves in a world where conservative beliefs are thought to be contentious.”
Parler, which has suffered in the face of competition from other conservative-friendly platforms like Truth Social, founded by former President Donald Trump, might find new life as a result of the acquisition. Data.ai, which measures mobile app usage, reports that Parler had a very small average of 983,000 monthly active users for the first half of this year.
Despite only being available on Apple devices and beginning in February, Truth Social had 2.4 million monthly users within the same time period, according to Data.ai. With around 3.8 million monthly active members, Gettr, a different right-leaning network that debuted in July 2021, is ahead of both Parler and Truth Social, according to the market research firm.
None of them compared to Twitter, which stated that during its most recent quarter, it had an average daily user base of roughly 237.8 million active users. Although billionaire Elon Musk has promised to ease some of Twitter’s speech restrictions if he follows through with a promised $44 billion takeover of the San Francisco company later this month, many right-wing platforms were born out of opposition to the content-moderation restrictions at mainstream services like Twitter and Facebook.
The August 2018 launch of Parler didn’t really take off until 2020. However, it was turned off after the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. One month after the assault, Parler announced a relaunch. The Google Play store had it back last month.
The CEO of Parlement Technologies, George Farmer, said in a prepared statement that “this partnership will transform the world and change the way the world thinks about free expression.”
In a statement on Monday, Parler CEO George Farmer welcomed West “in the struggle for free expression.”
According to Farmer, “Parler’s open door and viewpoint-neutral stance on social media offer an environment where everyone can communicate freely” as the social justice mob continues to target those they disagree with.
