It’s been two days since the announcement that Parler would be acquired by Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, and nobody seems to know much of anything about the relevant deal points, or indeed whether the deal is really happening at all. Or whether it’s in its Elon-esque early innings of a long-term, roller coaster-style consummation.
Parler, after all, is not being sold in a position of strength. It’s a relative ghost town among the various “free speech” social media companies that cropped up in the final years of Trump’s presidency. Traffic peaked at around 12.3 million unique users in January 2021, when it was used by right-wing groups to boast about their attack on the U.S. Capitol. Since then, of course, Parler was booted from the Apple and Google app stores before returning five weeks later, under new management and an agreement with the Big Tech platforms to actually moderate its users.
