Kanye West, Parler and the rise of right-wing social media

Kanye West is to buy “uncancellable” social-media app Parler for an undisclosed amount in a deal “that will change the way the world thinks about free speech”, according to the platform.

In a joint statement after reaching an agreement in principle, the rapper said: “In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial, we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves.”

‘Distancing himself from mainstream’

West, also known as Ye, has been banned from Twitter and Instagram after posting anti-Semitic messages last week. His Instagram account was suspended after he accused fellow rapper Diddy of being controlled by Jewish people. West then tweeted that he would go “death con three on Jewish people”, which led to his Twitter account being locked.

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Announcing the Parler deal in a tweet on Monday, the Nashville-based company’s CEO George Farmer said that West “will never have to fear being removed from social media again”.

The musician is making a “new home for himself in the right-wing mediasphere” after “further and further distancing himself from the mainstream that once so worshipped him”, said Slate. He has “lost a lot of collaborators thanks to his public misbehaviour”, but conservatives “have embraced him”.

“And now, right-wing social media executives are happy to take his money and share in what remains of his glow,” the site added.

‘Bastions of free speech’

The “far-right is flocking” to alternative social-media apps such as Parler, which is styled as a “free speech” alternative to Twitter, said Forbes. Other popular platforms include Gab, also billed as a “right-wing alternative to Twitter”; Gettr, a platform “founded on the principles of free speech”; and Rumble, a conservative variation of YouTube.

Since launching in 2018, Parler has amassed more than 250,000 monthly active users on its iOS and Android apps, according to industry data shared with TechCrunch. The platform claims to have 15m registered users in total.

Parler was founded by John Matze and Rebekah Mercer, the daughter of Breitbart founder Robert Mercer, and “has raised about $56m across private funding rounds”, the tech news site reported.

But despite attracting some big-name backers, “right-wing platforms are one-trick ponies”, argued Darren Linvill, lead researcher at the Media Forensics Hub at South Carolina’s Clemson University.

Building a robust social media platform requires “multiple perspectives so you can have lots of different conversations happening to bring in lots of different kinds of people”, Linvill told The Washington Post. But right-wing platforms are “only going to, by their nature, appeal to the type of person they are branded to appeal to, and there’s only so many people in that world”.

An analysis by the paper at the start of this year found that, following a surge in the wake of the Capitol riots on 6 January 2021, audiences on far-right platforms had “stagnated”.

Such apps are “most appealing to what’s ultimately a niche crowd”, said MSNBC’s political columnist Zeeshan Aleem. “When you’re a political junkie on social media, it can be easy to experience the illusion that everyone else is too,” he continued. But in reality, these junkies “make up a small part of social media networks”.

The limited growth potential for right-wing apps such as Parler underscores “how getting kicked off the major mainstream apps for violating rules is a punishment with real consequences”.

And these consequences may include “derailing the growth trajectory of major right-wing figures and their ability to win over a general audience”, Aleem added, amid ongoing speculation that West may run for the US presidency in 2024.