Kanye West has agreed in principle to buy Parler, the social media service that has attracted fans of former President Donald J. Trump, the service’s parent company, Parlement Technologies, said in a news release on Monday.
“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” the rapper and fashion designer, who now goes by Ye, said in the statement released by Parlement Technologies.
The announcement came a little over a week after Twitter and Instagram restricted Ye’s accounts after he posted antisemitic remarks. He had just returned to Twitter after not posting for nearly two years.
From its start in 2018, Parler, which is based is Nashville, has railed against censorship and has presented itself as a “free speech” social network. It is a competitor to Truth Social, which was founded by Mr. Trump.
Last month, Parler returned to Google’s Play app store, more than a year after Google suspended it for content that incited violence. The app had also been banned and reinstated from Apple’s App Store. Parler, which calls itself “the world’s pioneering uncancelable free speech platform,” currently ranks 108th on the U.S. iOS app store, according to Data.ai. At its peak, it was No. 1, as millions of Trump supporters, critical of what they deemed censorship on Facebook and Twitter, signed up.
Ye and Parlement Technologies expect to finalize their agreement in principle during the fourth quarter of this year, the news release said.
A report this month from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center found that only 6 percent of adults regularly seek out news from at least one of seven major alternative social media sites; in addition to Parler, they are BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social.
Of the 10,188 people surveyed, 38 percent had heard of Parler, Pew found. But despite the services’ limited reach, Pew found that most of the people who do frequent such places for news said they found like-minded company there.
Tiffany Hsu contributed reporting.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
