Ye Ha!

Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, has cut a deal with the alternative social media site Parler.

Parler, as you may know, was started as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook due to the increasingly harsh censorship of the social media companies. As conservatives have been increasingly shut out of sharing opinions and even news on these sites, people got fed up and started their own alternatives. Hence Parler was born.

Kanye West has faced similar problems in the past, although unlike most people who have been targets of cancel culture he has weathered the storms quite well, perhaps due to the fact that his audience is devoted to his music–and that it probably cares little for the hypersensitivity of the woke.

The latest controversy Ye stirred up was his being criticized for antisemitism, about which Ed wrote last week:

Most recently my friend Beege covered the media freak-out over Ye’s “White Lives Matter” shirt in her post “Ye, God, and little racists” last week. Beege did a good job of focusing mainly on the coverage, noting that Ye often talked in circular terms but felt he made a good argument on this particular issue. Others on the Right did the same, while some others went further to embrace Ye as a comrade in conservative arms for his tweaking of the Left, and pushed back against accusations of bigotry over this message.

That is, until Ye started publishing some other messages that are far less appealing, such as an anti-Semitic rant on Twitter:

Twitter locked rapper Kanye West’s Twitter account over an antisemitic tweet posted on the account on Saturday.

In the since-removed tweet, West said he was “going death con 3 [sic] On JEWISH PEOPLE,” and also that, “You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda,” without specifying what group he was addressing, according to Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine records pulled by CNN.

A spokesperson from Twitter confirmed to CNN that the account was locked for violating Twitter’s policies. The tweet has been replaced on the account by a message from the company saying, “This tweet violated the Twitter Rules.”

Good Lord.

Ye’s style is to say whatever pops into his mind, good or bad, and decided to get around restrictions by buying Parler. He says his main concern is promoting free speech, and Parler’s goal is to be uncancelable. His being banned for antisemitic comments apparently was the last straw.

I am a registered member of Parler, but haven’t really used it. Both Twitter and Facebook, however execrable the services can be at times, also have the benefit of network effects. A network effect is the phenomenon of a service becoming increasingly, even exponentially more useful to users the larger the user base is. And when a user base becomes large enough, alternatives become difficult to sustain. There just aren’t enough users to make these services useful to the majority of people.

In other words, once a critical mass is reached monopolies or near monopolies become inevitable. That is why when we say “social media” we are referring to a tiny number of companies.

Parler has not yet reached that level of user base, and it has struggled to do so despite its obvious benefits as a free speech platform. Kanye obviously sees potential to address that problem through more aggressive marketing to conservatives, who after all make up about a third to one half the population.

One problem Parler has faced is the relentlessly nasty coverage of the service. A quick glance at the Parler Wikipedia page illustrates this. It is pure propaganda against the site:

Parler (/ˈpɑːrlər/) is an American alt-tech microblogging and social networking service associated with Donald Trump supporters, conservatives, conspiracy theorists, and far-right extremists.^{[9][10][11][12][13]} Posts on the service often contain far-right content,^[19] antisemitism,^[26] and conspiracy theories such as QAnon.^[30] Journalists have described Parler as an alt-tech alternative to Twitter, and users include those banned from mainstream social networks or who oppose their moderation policies.^{[9][12][31][13]}

Launched in August 2018, Parler markets itself as a free speech-focused and unbiased alternative to mainstream social networks such as Twitter and Facebook. Journalists have criticized this as being a cover for its far-right userbase.^[11][12][25] Journalists and users have also criticized the service for content policies that are more restrictive than the company portrays and sometimes more restrictive than those of its competitors.^{[32][33][34][35]} Some left-wing and liberal users have been banned from Parler for challenging the prevailing viewpoints on the site, criticizing Parler, or creating parody accounts.^[36][37][38]

Founder and CEO John Matze was Parler’s chief executive officer until January 29, 2021, at which point he said he had been fired by the company’s board, which he asserted was controlled by co-founder and investor Rebekah Mercer.^[39] Former Tea Party activist Mark Meckler served as interim CEO from February to May 2021, when the Brexit Party donor and former candidate George Farmer was named CEO.^[40][41]

Parler’s userbase grew exponentially during 2020 with minimal content moderation.^[42][43] After reports that Parler was used to coordinate the 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol, several companies denied it their services.^[44] Apple and Google removed Parler’s mobile app from their app stores, and Parler went offline on January 10, 2021, when Amazon Web Services canceled its hosting services.^[45][46][47] Before it went offline in January 2021, according to Parler, the service had about 15 million users.^[48] Parler called the removals “a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the marketplace”.^[42] Parler resumed service on February 15, 2021, after moving domain registration to Epik.^[49] A version of the app with added content filters was released on the Apple App Store on May 17.^[7][8][50] Parler returned to Google Play on September 2, 2022.^[51]

The real kicker here is the claim that Parler was used to coordinate the January 6th riot. That is poppycock. Both Facebook and Twitter were used far more for obvious reasons, but they create the narrative so Parler took the hit.

I have no idea whether Ye can take Parler to the next level, but it will be interesting to see him try. I hope, though, that he learns to temper his tendency to say things that make no sense at all, and especially his repeated urge to air anti-Semitic tropes.