Ye, the artist once known as Kanye West, has agreed to buy Parler, a social media platform well-liked by Trump supporters, the firm said on Monday.
The unexpected action comes days after Twitter and Instagram suspended Ye’s accounts due to a string of widely denounced antisemitic postings.
The limitations Twitter and Instagram placed on his accounts were described as censorship by Parler, which bills itself as the “pioneering uncancelable free expression platform,” and claimed that due to Parler’s more hands-off approach to content monitoring, all voices are heard.
Ye stated in a 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.
However, in fact, Parler has been a hotbed of conspiracy theories, intolerance, and right-wing misinformation – stuff that typically does not directly contravene Parler’s rules.
The parent business Parlement Technologies, which is based in Nashville, runs the social networking platform Parler. No additional details of the agreement, including the price Ye has agreed to pay for the social media site, were disclosed. The agreement is anticipated to finalize before the end of the year, according to Parler executives.
Data from analytics firm Apptopia shows that Parler has been downloaded 11.7 million times and has roughly 40,000 daily active users. In contrast, Twitter reports having 237 million daily users, based on its most recent quarterly earnings.
Ye’s most recent conflicts, from Tucker Carlson to Paris Fashion Week
Ye is a frequent and frequently inconsistent user of social media. His musical career and clothing brand have made him a billionaire. Ye has been somewhat on a controversy binge in recent weeks.
He got into trouble earlier this month for wearing a “White Lives Matter” t-shirt to Paris Fashion Week. The phrase is regarded as hate speech by the Anti-Defamation League.
Ye promoted a variety of antisemitic conspiracy theories in previously unaired clips of an interview he conducted with Tucker Carlson on Fox News, which were just made public by Vice. He also surprised many when he claimed in the video that “professional actors” had been brought into his home to “sexualize” his kids.
Ye has been a steadfast admirer of former president Donald Trump on the political scene for a very long time. Ye, a vocal opponent of cancel culture, constantly criticizes what he perceives as excessive regulation of free expression in society.
The anything-goes attitude is a defining characteristic of Parler, which was founded in 2018 and has had a tumultuous past.
Deplatforming, a change in management, and a comeback
Hundreds of footage of the Capitol siege were released on Parler during the attack on that building on January 6. Parler had become a hub for far-right activists upset over Trump’s loss in the election before the attack.
Following the Capitol riots, Amazon severed Parler’s web hosting services due to Parler’s refusal to remove violent and abusive messages. This sparked a protracted legal dispute and the abrupt departure of Parler’s previous CEO John Matze.
A confrontation between Matze and Rebekah Mercer, the Republican megadonor and co-founder of Parler, about how the platform should handle provocative content, people close to the situation told NPR at the time, led to Matze’s abrupt departure.
When Apple and Google withdrew the service from their app stores for breaking their terms of service, Parler faced an extra setback. Apple claimed to have discovered posts that “glorified Nazism, urged violence, and denigrated many ethnic groups, ethnicities, and religions.”
Parler has since pledged to better police hate speech and violence on the platform, and as a result, Apple and Google have welcomed the app back to their app stores.
A number of other social media platforms that cater to the conservative community are also vying to disrupt Big Tech’s hegemony in the market where Parler is competing. They include TruthSocial, another Twitter rival launched by former president Trump, Rumble, a YouTube clone financed by billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel, and Gettr, a site comparable to Twitter founded by former Trump adviser Jason Miller.
Additionally, Ye’s upcoming acquisition of Parler comes as Twitter struggles with its own ownership crisis. Elon Musk and Twitter are engaged in exhausting discussions and legal disputes over his impending acquisition of the social media network, and the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has pledged, among other things, to ease Twitter’s content moderation guidelines.
Ye’s anticipated acquisition by Parler, according to CEO George Farmer, is expected to have a significant impact on online discourse.
Ye is taking a ground-breaking step into the world of free speech media, and he won’t ever have to worry about getting banned from social media again, according to Farmer. Ye once more demonstrates that he is one step ahead of the narrative presented by the legacy media.
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