Controversial rapper Kanye West has agreed to buy Parler, a would-be Twitter competitor whose extreme stance on free speech saw it banned from Apple and Google’s app stores and Amazon Web Services in the wake of last year’s US Capitol riot.
Parler’s parent company, Parlement Technologies, announced the unexpected acquisition on Monday, without disclosing financial details. The Nashville-based business said it had struck an “agreement in principle” with West, who has changed his name to Ye, and that the deal was expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2022.
West was briefly suspended from Twitter and Instagram earlier this month after making comments that were ruled anti-Semitic. After the offensive posts were deleted he was allowed to return to the platforms, where he has tens of millions of followers.
“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” West said in a press release issued by Parler. The artist has not posted about the deal from his verified account on Twitter.
The Parler profile that Parlement identified as West’s, which appears to have been set up as recently as Monday, had fewer than 200 followers at midday in London and had not yet posted.
Parlement chief executive George Farmer said the deal would “change the way the world thinks about free speech” and mean West “will never have to fear being removed from social media again”.
Parler was set up in 2018 as an alternative to existing social media platforms, which some US conservatives and far-right supporters alleged had become biased against them.
Farmer, a former hedge fund partner and candidate for the UK’s Brexit party, took over as head of Parler in May last year after his predecessor, John Matze, was fired after disagreements with its key backer, Republican mega-donor Rebekah Mercer.
Parler was allowed back on to Apple’s App Store in April 2021 after being kicked off the previous January for hosting rule-breaking content, including calls for violence in the days leading up to the Capitol protest in January 2021. However, it only returned to Google Play, the app store for Android smartphones, last month.
In September, Parlement said it had raised a $16mn funding round, taking its total funding to $56mn. At the same time it acquired a cloud infrastructure company, offering an alternative to providers such as Amazon Web Services, which had denied Parler hosting services in the wake of the Capitol riots.
When West started posting on Twitter again earlier this month after a long hiatus, he was greeted by the social media company’s putative acquirer Elon Musk: “Welcome back to Twitter, my friend!”