Hear Ye Hear Ye! The news today has broken that Kanye West – who calls himself Ye – has bought Parler, the Trumpist social media platform.

The news was announced earlier by Parler CEO George Farmer, the son of Lord Farmer, the Conservative peer. ‘This deal will change the world and change the way the world thinks about free speech,’ said George.

Farmer is also the husband of Candace Owens, the American MAGA celebrity, who appears to have been an important influence – is muse the right word? – in Ye’s conversion away from Hollywood La La Land and towards Trump-infused right-nationalist populism. Candace and Kanye both recently appeared together wearing ‘White Lives Matter’ T-shirts.

Parler, from the French verb meaning ‘to talk’, and West have both had a tumultuous time in recent years. The rapper last week had his Instagram and Twitter accounts stopped after he promised to go ‘death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE’ and suggested his rival rapper P Diddy was controlled by Jewish people.

Cynics might now suggest that this appalling online blow-out was a convoluted PR stunt to draw attention to his acquisition of Parler. But Steerpike tends to think that is to get matters back-to-front: it is safer to assume cockup over conspiracy in the madcap world of free speech content creation.

Like West, Parler has already been widely derided and cancelled. Founded in 2018 as a ‘disruptor’ to take on the censorious Twitter, the company was given large amounts of right-wing money but quickly ran into tech problems as it turned out the initial app didn’t work very well.

It now has two major rivals in the ‘uncensored’ space: Trump’s own platform Truth Social, led by former chair of the House Intelligence Committee Devin Nunes, and Gettr, run by former Trump campaign manager Jason Miller.

All three companies pride themselves on fighting the fight against cancel culture, but Parler has rather fallen behind Gettr and Truth Social in terms of public relevance. Parler was royally cancelled by Google and Apple’s app stores after being implicated as a platform for those who stormed the US Capitol on January 6th. Amazon also cancelled its Web Services contract for hosting the site.

None of these sites, even if their growth has at times been surprisingly large, is yet anywhere near to even remotely threatening the tech giants. One difficulty Parler, Gettr and Truth Social all face, as platforms that publish politicised content, is a lack of ‘viewpoint diversity’. Too many users all agree with each other, so there isn’t enough argument to keep visitors engaged.

Still, Truth Social has garnered millions of new users chiefly because it is where President Donald J. Trump most instantly broadcasts his thoughts to the world.

Can Ye turn things around for Parler? He is – like Trump – a viral weather maker because of his ability to shock, even horrify. And George Farmer sounded optimistic in the company press release. ‘While I cannot provide all the details today, I have complete confidence that Parler, as both a platform and a community, will experience the limitless growth it deserves,’ he said.

Limitless is a very ‘Ye’ word, isn’t it just?