Kanye West, the rapper, fashion designer and firebrand increasingly known for divisive cultural and political commentary that has been called racist, appears set to become the owner of a social media service known for its right-wing audience.
The parent company of Parler, which bills itself as a platform for uncancellable free speech, said Monday that West, who now goes by Ye, would acquire the site for an undisclosed sum of money.
In buying Parler, Ye will help “continue the fight against censorship, cancel culture and authoritarianism,” George Farmer, CEO of Parler’s parent company, Parlement Technologies, said in a statement.
The deal was announced a little over a week after Twitter and Instagram restricted Ye’s accounts in response to anti-Semitic remarks that he posted.
The announcement adds another shot of name recognition to the crowded cluster of social media alternatives that have emerged in recent years to take on Twitter and Facebook, which critics have long argued unfairly censor conservative voices.
Former president Donald Trump recently started Truth Social, which advertises itself as a platform that “encourages an open, free and honest global conversation.”
Jason Miller, Trump’s former spokesman, began running Gettr, a similar service, last year. And for the past six months, Elon Musk has been locked in a battle to take over Twitter, saying he wants to transform the site by better promoting free speech.
“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” Ye said in a statement released by Parlement.
Parler, which was started in 2018 and is based thousands of miles from Silicon Valley in Nashville, Tennessee, has been among the most notable alternatives.
Backed by right-wing activist and heiress Rebekah Mercer, it was once the most downloaded app on Apple’s App Store, fashioning its resistance to stringent content rules into a selling point and drawing millions of Trump’s fans.
The company said last month that it had more than 16 million users, though it did not disclose how many used it regularly. Twitter has more than 230 million daily users.
On Monday, a Parler account in Ye’s name went online. Within a few hours, he had amassed more than 8,000 followers. He had no posts. – New York Times
