The man who famously stated that former President George W. Bush “doesn’t care about Black people” during a Hurricane Katrina relief telecast in 2005 is continuing his conservative shift by buying one of the world’s most far-right social media platforms.
After accusing Meta and Twitter of “censoring” him in recent weeks due to being locked out of both platforms for anti-Semitic screeds, Ye has reached an agreement to purchase Parler, a platform that purports itself as an outlet for “uncancelable free speech.” A popular outlet for supporters of former President Donald Trump, Parler was banned from Google Play and the Apple App Store following January 2021’s US Capitol riots for its role in inciting violence. It was restored to the former platform in May 2021 and the latter this past November after adding a “content moderation” layer.
Parler will be sold to Ye in full, and will operate under a new umbrella company called Parliament Technologies, which will provide technical support and cloud storage to the platform. “The proposed acquisition will assure Parler a future role in creating an uncancelable ecosystem where all voices are welcome,” the company said in a statement.
Parler currently has around 250,000 active users and was founded in 2018 by John Matze and Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of far-right news platform Breitbart founder Robert Mercer. In another twist, the company’s CEO, George Farmer, is married to conservative commentator Candace Owens — who’s recently become a part of West’s inner circle, leading some media outlets to speculate that her behind-the-scenes maneuvering may have convinced Ye to purchase the platform. The financial terms of the deal were not announced.
Elsewhere in tech news, Apple has been accused of purposely making messages from Android devices hard to read.
wazup.