Kanye West agrees to buy social network Parler

SOCIAL network Parler said Monday (Oct 17) that Kanye West has announced his intention to buy the platform, which has gained popularity among US conservatives.

“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” the rapper and fashion mogul, who is now known as Ye, said in Parler’s statement.

The value of the deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2022, was not disclosed. Ye and Parlement Technologies expect to finalise their agreement in principle during the fourth quarter of this year, the statement said.

Earlier in October, Instagram and Twitter restricted West’s accounts over posts slammed as anti-Semitic.

George Farmer, Parler’s executive director, said the deal will “change the way the world thinks about free speech”.

“Ye is making a groundbreaking move into the free-speech media space and will never have to fear being removed from social media again,” he said.

Launched in 2018, Parler became a haven for supporters of former US president Donald Trump and far-right users, who say they have been censored by other social media platforms such as Twitter. Parler, which calls itself “the world’s pioneering uncancellable free-speech platform,” currently ranks 108th for news apps in the US iOS app store, said Data.ai, a platform that provides consumer and market data. At its peak, it was No. 1, as millions of Trump supporters, critical of what they deemed censorship on Facebook and Twitter, signed up.

But Parler was pulled from the Apple and Google online marketplaces and effectively shut down when Amazon Web Services cut ties over allegations the platform failed to stop incitement of violence ahead of the Jan 6, 2021, siege of the US Capitol.

Last month, Google allowed Parler back into its Play Store, more than a year after banning the platform.

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The network describes itself as “a guiding force in the fight against Big Tech, Big Government, censorship, and cancel culture”.

A report this month from the non-partisan Pew Research Center found that only 6 per cent of adults regularly seek out news from at least one of seven major alternative social media sites; in addition to Parler, they are BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social.

Of the 10,188 people surveyed, 38 per cent had heard of Parler, Pew found. But despite the services’ limited reach, Pew found that most of the people who do frequent such places for news said they found like-minded company there.

Dan Wang, a strategy professor at Columbia Business School, said that Parler was an “incredibly niche” player, with limited influence and only a few hundred thousand monthly active users. “That’s really a drop in the bucket,” said Wang, whose research focuses on how social networks drive social and economic transformation. “Kanye West is a wealthy person and has a lot of resources, but not on the scale of being able to buy actually influential social media platforms.” AFP, NYT