Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, to acquire this social media platform

“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 prepared statement.

Parler was introduced in August 2018, but it didn’t gain traction until 2020. Due to its connections to the tragic uprising at the US Capitol earlier that month, it was taken offline in January 2021. Parler announced a relaunch one month after the assault. The Google Play store had it back last month.

West and Parlement Technologies, who jointly run Parler, have stated that the acquisition should close in the fourth quarter but have not provided the price or any other information. According to Parlement Technologies, the agreement covers using private cloud services through the private cloud and data centre infrastructure of Parliament.

There is, however, no clear path to growing Parler beyond a niche platform chasing the scraps left by mainstream social media, even among the new breed of largely right-wing, far-right, and libertarian social apps that claim to support free speech by having looser rules and moderation. Parler’s user base is tiny even among this new breed.

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Things could get even more difficult for Parler if Tesla CEO Elon Musk follows through on his ambition to buy Twitter. This is due to the fact that Musk has already stated his desire to relax Twitter’s content-moderation policies, including reactivating former President Donald Trump’s account.

Since last week, Ye has been prohibited from posting on Twitter and Instagram due to antisemitic comments that the social media platforms said breached their regulations. Ye was criticised earlier in October for sporting a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his collection at Paris Fashion Week. He previously labelled the COVID-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast”.

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One-third of tweets made in the US are political in character, according to the Pew Research Center, but these are primarily sent by a tiny subset of generally older individuals. According to Pew, while Americans over 50 make up 24% of the US adult Twitter population, they also write roughly 80% of all political tweets. If the rapper is serious about increasing the number of users on Parler, he or she should be courting this audience using Ye’s Parler.

(With AP inputs)