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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   31256 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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Kanye West is buying ‘free speech platform’ Parler

Kanye West, the musician now known as Ye, is buying Parler, a social media platform that styles itself as a “free speech” alternative to Twitter. The acquisition was announced by Parler in a press release, which said that it has entered into an agreement in principle with Ye that’s expected to close later this year.

“In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be controversial we have to make sure we have the right to freely express ourselves,” said Ye in a press statement.

Parlement Technologies, Parler’s parent company, said the acquisition would help create “an uncancelable ecosystem where all voices are welcome.” In a message sent this morning to the “Parler Family,” (included in full below), Parlement Technologies CEO George Farmer said, “The current Parler staff you’ve come to know —many of whom you’ve interacted with— will still be working on the app, and the platform will continue to utilize Dynascale’s cloud services.”

How much do you think he paid? (Parler raised $56 million recently after its site famously went down.) My own take is, it seems like a waste of money given that the market for alt-tech is getting saturated and the tendency of these platforms to lose money. It means he is not only buying Parler outright, but also covering all future losses. There is Rumble, dLive, Odysee, Bitchute, etc. None of these small video sites are making much money, probably most will not survive. Social media , like online dating, is a very saturated market, which doesn't make me optimistic.

If someone has $50-100 million to invest in 'free speech' or to promote anti-woke causes, how would/should he or she go about it? Someone like Elon can buy Twitter outright, but Kanye is not nearly as wealthy.

Wasn't Parler thrown off the Apple and Google app stores? Or was that some other company? I forget these things.

In any event, I don't think Kanye understands how politics in the US actually work. If he or his company becomes enough of a nuisance then they will simply be sabotaged in ever more extreme ways.

They got back on IIRC.

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