Kanye West is in the process of buying Parler, an alternative social networking platform popular among conservatives.
Parler’s parent firm revealed the contract on Monday morning, which stated that West had made “a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space and will never have to fear being removed from social media again.”
The purchase comes after West legally changed his name to Ye and had his Twitter account momentarily suspended this month due to an antisemitic comment.
The exact details of the Parler transaction were not released, but Parler stated that it still has to enter into a final agreement with West and intends to close in the fourth quarter. Parler’s parent company, Parlement Technologies, will continue to be involved by offering technical services and cloud support.
After former President Donald Trump’s quest to win over conservatives with Truth Social and Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s proposed takeover of Twitter, West’s purchase of Parler might make him the next celebrity owner of a social media network. It also shows how many affluent individuals, some of whom have been banned or suspended for making incendiary statements, are attempting to control social media sites to strengthen what they call “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,” West said in a release by Parler.
Parler included a link to West’s account on the site, which appeared to have debuted at the same time as the announcement. The account has about 500 followers as of early Monday.
The agreement comes at a particularly contentious time for Ye. West has recently made news for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt in public and defended his usage of the slogan — a term associated with white supremacy groups according to the Anti-Defamation League — as “funny” to Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson. Adidas announced last month that it was reconsidering its association with West following the shirt incident. West also announced in September that he was ending a two-year association with the apparel brand Gap.
The ADL’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, called Parler a “hate haven” on Monday.
Parler was created in 2018 and had remarkable development in the run-up to the 2020 election. The app, which bills itself as a loosely controlled free-speech refuge, quickly gained popularity among conservative lawmakers and media professionals, reaching an estimated 2.9 million daily users, according to market research firm Apptopia. However, its fortunes have deteriorated since then, with Apptopia reporting on Monday that Parler’s projected daily user count has dropped to only 40,000. (In comparison, Twitter has over 237 million daily active users.)
Parler was deleted from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the weeks following the Jan. 6 riots for what the firms claimed was a failure to sufficiently filter violent comments on the site. Documents released to the House committee examining the Capitol riots revealed that the Secret Service was aware of Parler tweets indicating the risk of violence that day. Separately, Parler wrote to Congress, alleging that legislators’ interest in the app’s participation in the riots was designed to “scapegoat” the app.
After modifying its content filtering methods, Parler was re-added to both app stores.
Parler has recently experienced competition as the right-wing internet media environment has grown. Truth Social debuted in the Apple App Store in February and was authorized for the Google Play Store on October 13.
Truth Social witnessed a surge in downloads last week due to its inclusion in the Google Play Store, after hovering around 144,000 daily active users.
If Musk’s purchase of Twitter goes through, it has the potential to disrupt Parler and comparable businesses. Musk has often advocated for the abolition of permanent bans and a reassessment of Twitter’s approach to content moderation, which may reintroduce some of the people who migrated to small sites like Parler to the much bigger platform.
It might also imply that Musk and Ye, who are thought to be buddies, are suddenly in competition with one another. Musk responded to Ye’s anti-Semitic comments by tweeting, “Talked to ye today & expressed my concerns about his recent tweet, which I think he took to heart.”
Ye’s purchase of Parler was disclosed one week later.