Kanye “Ye” West has inked a deal with Parlement Technologies to buy Parler, a copycat of Twitter that was started to “fight against Big Tech, Big Government, censorship and cancel culture.”
West’s move to acquire Parler comes after Twitter and Instagram restricted the music artist and entrepreneur’s accounts earlier this month because he posted antisemitic comments.
Terms of West’s proposed deal for Parler were not disclosed. In a statement, West and Parlement said, “Ye has become the richest Black man in history through music and apparel and is taking a bold stance against his recent censorship from Big Tech, using his far-reaching talents to further lead the fight to create a truly non-cancelable environment.”
“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 statement.
Founded in 2018, Parler boasts that it’s an “uncancelable free speech platform.” But the pro-Trump app’s hands-off approach to content moderation resulted in Apple and Google banning Parler from their app stores — in the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — over what they said were Parler’s violations of their prohibitions on content that incites violence. Amazon also cut off its AWS hosting deal with Parler.
Apple’s App Store restored Parler in April 2021, after finding the app was better able to remove hate speech and violent content. Google Play Store finally agreed to re-list Parler in September.
Parlement Technologies CEO George Farmer claimed West’s acquisition of Parler “will change the world, and 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.”
In the Twitter post that led to his account’s suspension, West said “I’m going death [sic] con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE” and claimed that he couldn’t be antisemitic because Black people “are Jew also.” He also said he had been “toyed with” by the Jewish people.
Under the terms of West and Parlement’s agreement in principle, the parties intend to enter into a definitive purchase agreement and expect to close during the fourth quarter of 2022. The terms of the proposed transaction would include ongoing technical support from Nashville, Tenn.-based Parlement and the use of private cloud services via Parlement’s private cloud and data center infrastructure.
West also faced controversy this month after wearing a shirt reading “White Lives Matter” during his surprise Yeezy Season 9 fashion show in Paris. Less than a week later Adidas, which produces his Yeezy collection of sneakers, said it was putting its partnership with West under review. And last month, Gap said it was ending its partnership with West because the retailer and West were “not aligned.”
Meanwhile, Donald Trump — who was kicked off Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other services in the wake of Jan. 6 — started his own company, Trump Media & Technology Group, which this year launched its own Twitter-like service called Truth Social. Last week, Google added Truth Social to the Play Store after previously rejecting it for hosting policy-violating content like physical threats and incitement to violence.
