Following the extreme downward spiral of Kanye West’s reputation, which comes off as little surprise considering how he basically championed targeted hate speech, the free speech platform Parler has confirmed that its supposed acquisition by Mr. West has been terminated. Unfortunately for Ye, it seems that he won’t be following in the footsteps of Elon Musk in being the owner of his own Social Media platform. 

Deal’s Off

Parler did mention that both parties came to an agreement, confirming that the decision is what would benefit them both the most. Check out the official announcement here. Though the reason behind this decision isn’t entirely clear, it likely has something to do with Ye’s rapidly declining value and reputation. Obviously, if you’re a public figure who has a large following and multiple branded partnerships, the last thing you’d want to do is cut all of that off by saying absolutely dumb things and ruining your own net worth.

As reported by Axios, West’s financial situation supposedly impacted his deal with Parler. West originally announced his intentions back in October, saying, at the time, that he needed to buy his own platform to share his ‘unfiltered’ opinions with the world. What led to his decision was being booted off from both Instagram and Twitter by testing their limits by sharing offensive and anti-Semitic remarks.

“People had talked about it and mentioned this idea for years, but enough was enough.”

However, West seems to not be so heavily bothered by this as some of us might have assumed. He’s apparently moving on and focusing on his 2024 Presidential Run. Oh dear. He also has seemingly pinned his hopes on Musk for a future reformation of Social Media moderation rules. 

As per Kanye West:

“I love the first amendment! Long live Ye! I pray to Jesus that Elon is for real…”

This left Parler in a less than certain predicament, given how it continues its efforts to develop a more sustainable business model to maintain its operations as a free speech platform. Parley, before the ultimatums presented to it after the Capitol Riots, was as much of a ‘loose canon’ as Ye, with Apple and Google stating that the app has allowed too many posts that encouraged violence and crime, hence its subsequent removal from their app stores. In the end, Parler was still subject to higher authorities and was found to have begun censoring certain posts, garnering it truckloads of criticism mainly from its own user base. The fact that Elon promised to introduce a more open approach on Twitter when he took over didn’t spell Parler’s own relevance any good either.

The Wrap

While free speech is indeed a thing, it doesn’t excuse blatantly harmful and discriminatory behavior; when people say they have the right to say this and that, they can, but at no other person’s expense or detriment. The truth is that the internet largely lacks universal moderation policies simply because of its sheer scale. To mitigate this, certain regulatory practices have to be set in place and observed. As a social platform, while you can advocate for free speech, you must also always keep in mind that more powerful organizations tasked with keeping order and peace will be watching, so if you want to stay in operation, you can’t just be gung-ho with what you say and post.

Sources 

https://bit.ly/3VtPu4u