A week after Ye, more commonly known as the former Kanye West, was kicked off of Twitter and Instagram for antisemitic posts, the rapper is offering to buy conservative social media network Parler. The network tweeted the news Monday morning, saying the deal “ensures Parler a future role in creating an uncancelable ecosystem where all voices are welcome.”
“This deal will change the world, and change the way the world thinks about free speech,” Parler quoted its CEO George Farmer as saying in a reply to the initial tweet. “Ye is making a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space and will never have to fear being removed from social media again.”
Parler, which launched in August 2018, was kicked offline following the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. A month after the attack, Parler announced a relaunch.
The app returned to Google Play last month. However, it has since struggled amid competition from other conservative platforms like Truth Social.
Parlement Technologies, which owns the platform, and West said the acquisition should be completed in the fourth quarter. More details, including the price tag on the deal, were not initially disclosed. Parlement Technologies said the agreement includes the use of private cloud services via Parlement’s private cloud and data center infrastructure.
West’s Parler purchase comes just days after Twitter and Instagram booted him from their platforms over posts the social networks said violated their policies. In one post on Twitter, Ye said he would soon go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” according to internet archive records. The quote, an apparent reference to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.
“You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” West said in the “death con” tweet. It drew a sharp rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which called the tweet “deeply troubling, dangerous, and antisemitic, period.”
“While Ye has been no stranger to controversy and antisemitism in recent years, this dangerous rhetoric may help advance the spread of existing false and antisemitic narratives shared by extremist groups,” the ADL said in a blog post Friday.
