The rapper formerly known as Kanye West is offering to buy right-wing friendly social network

Parler shortly after getting locked out of Twitter and Instagram for antisemitic posts.

The acquisition of Parler would give West, legally known as Ye, control of a social media platform

and a new outlet for his opinions with no gatekeeper. The question is, who will listen?

Even among the new breed of largely right-wing, far-right and libertarian social apps that purport

to support free speech by having looser rules and moderation, Parler’s user base is tiny — and with

competition only increasing for the relatively small swath of mostly older people who want to

discuss politics online, there is no clear roadmap to growing it beyond a niche platform chasing

crumbs left by mainstream social media.

If Tesla CEO Elon Musk goes through with his planned purchase of Twitter, things may get even

more complicated for Parler. That’s because Musk has already made it clear he would like to loosen

Twitter’s rules and content-moderation efforts, including reinstating the account of former

President Donald Trump. If the libertarian and far-right users who left Twitter — either because

they felt it was constricting to their political views or because they were kicked off — return, sites

like Parler, Gab and Trump’s Truth Social could end up losing users.

Parlement Technologies, which owns Parler, and West said Monday the acquisition should be

completed in the fourth quarter, but the price and other details were not disclosed. Parlement

Technologies said the agreement includes the use of private cloud services via Parlement’s private

cloud and data center infrastructure.

Parler restructured its business last month to form Parlement Technologies, which it said aims to

become the “world’s premier free speech technology infrastructure and platform.” This means that

rather than running a single platform such as Parler, the company wants to provide services to

other niche sites that are often deemed too extreme for mainstream tech companies to support. A

Parlement spokesperson said the deal with West was not yet in the works when the company was

restructured and the two transactions are separate.

Ye was blocked from posting on Twitter and Instagram a week ago over antisemitic posts that 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, making an apparent reference

to the U.S. defense readiness condition scale known as DEFCON.

Ye has also suggested slavery was a choice and called the COVID-19 vaccine the “mark of the beast.” Earlier this month, he was criticized for wearing a “White Lives Matter” T-shirt to his collection at Paris Fashion Week.

“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 has struggled amid competition from other conservative-friendly platforms like Truth Social,

which are tiny as well compared with mainstream social media sites. Parler had an average of

725,000 monthly active users in the U.S. for the first half of this year, according to Data.ai, which

tracks mobile app usage. That’s down from 5.2 million in the first half of 2021. Overall, including

people outside the U.S., Parler still failed to reach the 1 million mark in the first half of this year.

Truth Social, meanwhile, had 2.4 million monthly users during the same period, despite launching just in February and only on Apple devices, according to Data.ai. The market research firm said another right-leaning platform, Gettr, which launched in July 2021, is ahead of both Parler and Truth Social with about 3.8 million monthly active users.

None of them come close to Twitter, which reported that it had a daily average of about 237.8

million active users during its most recent quarter. Many of the right-wing platforms emerged from

opposition to the content-moderation restrictions at mainstream services such as Twitter and

Facebook, but they have failed to attract users in large numbers.