Parler

Friday

Cockburn

Elon Musk is now Donald Trump’s business rival

Cockburn has always had some formidable business rivals to contend with. It's not easy competing with the likes of other thinly sourced gossip rags like Page Six and the Washington Post (even if Cockburn is confident he could drink the staff at all those publications under the table). Yet so far as competition goes, it's Elon Musk who has it the worst this week. Last night, Musk completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter, a calm and rational discussion site where people like to post helpful gardening tips and delicious recipes. "The bird is freed," Musk tweeted, though there are at least a few people (outside the expected left-wing freak-out) who won't be quite so pleased.

Tuesday

Kara Kennedy

Inside the Kanye West-Parler deal

After emailing a nameless press contact for Parler, the last thing I expected was to get a flattering reply from George Farmer, the CEO himself. “I’m a Spectator subscriber, nice to e-meet,” he said. Farmer joined the right-wing social media app Parler in March 2021 as operating chief, and was promoted that May to CEO. “My goal is to provide the platform for the disenfranchised and the voiceless who feel that the mainstream has cut them out,” Farmer told the Financial Times at the time. “It is almost like we are an ‘anti’-company.” Just over one year on, and that "anti"-company has been acquired by rapper and businessman Kanye West. After a string of recent controversies, Kanye and Parler are under the spotlight.

george farmer parler

Monday

Ben Kew

Is TRUTH Social doomed to fail?

Following his suspension from Twitter in the wake of January 6, the question of where Donald Trump would take his tweets was a matter of much public debate. At the time, his options were limited. The obvious choice was Parler, which had experienced rapid growth in response to Twitter’s censorship. Yet after Amazon pulled its web hosting services over concerns about “hate speech,” the company fast imploded. The only other possibility was Gab, though its reputation as a cesspool of racist bile meant it likely would have been a PR disaster that even Trump would have struggled to weather. Seemingly out of ideas, Trump started an online blog, although that project was short-lived. His only other prospect was to launch a new platform at which he would be the star attraction.

kanye west candace owens parler
Cockburn

Is Candace Owens cashing in on Kanye West?

A great American poet once wrote: I went to the malls and I balled too hard/ “Oh my God, is that a black card?”/ I turned around and replied, “Why yes/ But I prefer the term 'African-American Express.’” How times change. Following a failed presidential run, a bitter divorce and two poorly reviewed records, for Kanye West, “balling too hard” now means buying a right-wing social media site from Candace Owens’s husband. It was announced today that Kanye, who now goes by Ye, is to buy the social media platform Parler, in a move the company characterized as “a bold stance against his recent censorship from Big Tech.

Thursday

Jay Caruso

Can GETTR go the distance?

Where to go these days in social media when you want to MAGA and shake off Big Tech’s shackling of free speech on woke corporate giants such as Facebook and Twitter? You have a few choices, including one just announced by Donald Trump, TRUTH Social, which is set to launch in 2022. In addition to Parler, an app favored by Dan Bongino, a prominent Trump supporter, TRUTH Social will compete with GETTR, which is run by Trump’s ex-advisor Jason Miller, who left his unofficial job with the Trump Organization to run the fledgling Twitter clone. The OG Twitter alternative is Gab.

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Friday

Matt McDonald

The trouble with Trump’s new social network

“Start your own social media site,” goes the common refrain when conservatives complain about getting kicked off Facebook and Twitter. Well, now Donald Trump has. On Wednesday night, the former president announced the launch of the Orwellian-sounding “TRUTH Social” and “Trump Media & Technology Group.” “I created TRUTH Social and TMTG to stand up to the tyranny of Big Tech,” Trump said in the press release. “We live in a world where the Taliban has a huge presence on Twitter, yet your favorite American President has been silenced. This is unacceptable. I am excited to send out my first TRUTH on TRUTH Social very soon.

truth social

Monday

Stephen L. Miller

Parler is not going to replace Twitter

Parler, the right-wing conservative public Slack channel, saw a surge in users last week after Twitter banned popular meme-maker Carpe Donktum. It’s all the rage in social media world, especially among free speech enthusiasts and the political right. It’s managed to not just pick up Twitter exiles like Laura Loomer, Milo Yiannopoulos, Jacob Wohl and Twitter’s most famous Resistance Reply Guys, Ed and Brian Krassenstein, but more mainstream conservatives such as Megyn Kelly or Fox strongman Dan Bongino. It also has attracted politicians — Ted Cruz has endorsed the platform multiple times.

parler