Kanye West, the currently embattled fashion mogul and famous rapper, has officially agreed to purchase conservative social media platform Parler as part of a joint statement issued Monday by both West and the company.
West has been embroiled in a series of controversies over the past few weeks in the wake of being kicked off both Instagram and Twitter after issuing some statements that have been called anti-Semitic. Buying out and taking over the platform will make sure it stays an area for the free exchange of opinions, West expressed.
“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” stated the rapper in a release.
Parlement Technologies is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement in principle for Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, to acquire the Parler platform. The acquisition ensures Parler a future role in creating an uncancelable ecosystem where all voices are welcome. pic.twitter.com/KXdhV71prl
— Parler (@ParlerMedia) October 17, 2022
The overall terms of the deal were not discussed or disclosed in the release, however, the company did announce this past Sunday that it had managed to secure over $16 million in funding and was intending to purchase Irvine, California-based cloud company Dynascale. This purchase would make it possible for Parler to be able to dodge restrictions placed by Big Tech cloud services. The most recent funding brings the total to $56 million for Parler, explained the company.
The CEO of Parler’s parent company Parlement Technologies and husband to , George Farmer, claimed that the investment from West “will change the world, and change the way the world thinks about free speech.”
“Ye is making a groundbreaking move into the free speech media space and will never have to fear being removed from social media again,” explained Farmer in a statement of his own. “Once again, Ye proves that he is one step ahead of the legacy media narrative. Parlement will be honored to help him achieve his goals.”
Farmer, the son of a British Conservative member of the upper chamber of the U.K. Parliament Michael Farmer, was put in place as CEO back in May of 2021. That decision came in the wake of a massive battle between former Parler CEO John Matze and top shareholder Rebekah Mercer.
West and Owens are friends and recently took headlines when they wore “White Lives Matter” apparel this month on the show floor for the Paris Fashion show.
Being apparently worth just over $2 billion, West most recently spoke in an interview held with an online TV show titled Drink Champs in which he went further with his rant against Jews that was labeled as the reason he had been kicked out of his various social media accounts, which have tens of millions of followers.
“What they do is, the Jewish community, especially in the music industry, … entertainment, period, they’ll take one of us, the brightest of us, right, that could really feed a whole village,” West stated in one of the many insane comments. “And they take and milk us until we die and then Stevie Wonder’s kid gotta get a job.”
Parler was initially launched back in 2018 as a conservative rival to Twitter.