Kanye West May Find Parler Won't Offer Unlimited Freedom: Watchdog Groups

Parler on Monday announced Kanye West is in the process of acquiring the social media platform after he faced restrictions on his Twitter and Instagram accounts for posting comments deemed antisemitic by many people.

Representatives from Right Wing Watch—a project of People for the American Way that monitors conservative organizations—and watchdog group Media Matters for America spoke with Newsweek about a number of issues their organizations are concerned about in regard to West's Parler deal. But both groups agreed that West, who legally changed his name to Ye in 2021, might not find Parler to be the open forum of free speech he is anticipating.

Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, referenced Parler calling itself the "uncancelable free speech platform" when speaking with Newsweek about the acquisition.

"If the appeal [for Ye] was something that was uncancelable, it wouldn't be a social media app or any app. It's still cancelable because you have to adhere to the terms of service or the app store," Carusone said.

In January 2021, Parler was removed from the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store due to objectionable content posted by users. Though Parler returned to Apple a few months later after it agreed to better detect hate speech and incitement, the platform only returned to Google last month.

Parler made a great deal of effort to get back in the app stores, Carusone said. Because of this, he said, there are limits to the "free speech" on Parler, and Ye is "going to find those limits out potentially pretty quickly."

Peter Montgomery, the research director at Ring Wing Watch, agreed with this assessment.

"Like other right-wing platforms, Parler isn't really anything goes," Montgomery told Newsweek. "It's possible that if Ye turns it into just an open stage for antisemitism, it could run right back into problems with platforms and companies."

The announcement of Ye's intention to buy Parler comes two weeks after he wore a "White Lives Matter" shirt at a Paris fashion show. Conservative pundit Candace Owens appeared with him at the event and wore a shirt with the same logo. As many outlets noted on Monday, Owens is married to Parler CEO George Farmer.

Carusone said he believes Ye "got into a moment when passions are running high" after he was moderated on the other platforms for comments made in the backlash he experienced for the "White Lives Matter" incident. Carusone also compared Ye's Parler deal to Elon Musk's plan to buy Twitter.

"When Musk talks about Twitter, a lot of what he's critiquing is this idea that somehow the other platforms and Twitter as it exists now cater too much to reflexive, left-leaning ideology," he said, adding this is why Musk and Ye speak of offering an alternative.

Both Carusone and Montgomery felt it's much too early to know how Ye's future with Parler will play out.

"It's hard to predict the future. This could just be mostly a waste of his money. Parler and other right-wing echo chamber platforms are not exactly thriving," Montgomery said. "If [former President Donald] Trump couldn't turn Truth Social into a viable alternative to Twitter, it's not clear that Kanye West is going to be able to do that with Parler."

Montgomery continued, "We do know that social media has proven to be a vehicle for promoting conspiracy theories and radicalizing individual people in the extremist ideologies. So if he wants to go down that route, and make it a platform for things like antisemitism, that would be troubling."

Newsweek reached out to a Ye representative for comment.