Parler Exec Peikoff to Newsmax: 'Pleasantly Surprised,' 'Excited' by Ye Purchase Offer (Newsmax/"American Agenda")
By Charles Kim | Monday, 17 October 2022 10:49 PM EDT
Parler's Head of Policy and Legal, Amy Peikoff told Newsmax on Monday she was "pleasantly surprised" to learn rapper Kanye West, who now goes by "Ye," was interested in buying the social media platform.
She is "excited" to see what that could mean with the musician.
"I found out about this only on Friday, and I told George Farmer, our CEO, 'You know, I thought nothing could surprise me anymore,' but this was, of course, a pleasant surprise, but a surprise," Peikoff told Monday's "American Agenda." "At the same time, he's an artist, and he's a musician. So, one of the things I'm very excited about is that he's going to bring to the platform a lot of nonpolitical content, not just politics anymore, so I'm very excited to see where it goes."
The New York Times reported Monday that Ye would buy the social media platform, which prides itself on a lack of censoring users and protecting the First Amendment's right to free speech, for an "undisclosed" amount.
The rapper approached Parler a week after being restricted on his Twitter and Instagram accounts for alleged antisemitic remarks he made there.
"[Ye will help us] continue the fight against censorship, cancel culture, and authoritarianism," George Farmer, the chief executive of Parler's parent company, Parlement Technologies, said in a statement to the Times on Monday.
Peikoff, who has been with the company for two years, said she witnessed the initial exodus from Twitter to Parler by many conservatives after being banned or restricted from what they could tweet.
Parler, however, was also a victim of cancel culture itself around the same time, losing its cloud services and hosting from Apple, Google, and Amazon in January 2021 after being accused of having a role in the storming of the U.S. Capitol, Forbes reported in February 2021 – when the site relaunched with a new web-hosting company, Epik, which also hosts Gab and 8chan.
"When Parler was taken offline in January by those who desire to silence 10s of millions of Americans, our team came together, determined to keep our promise to our highly engaged community that we would return stronger than ever," interim Parler CEO Mark Meckler told the publication at the time, adding: "We're thrilled to welcome everyone back."
Parler is among a group of alternative social media sites like Truth Social, owned by former President Donald Trump, and created after he was taken off Twitter in the aftermath of Jan. 6, so conservative voices could still have a voice online.
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