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How Billionaires Are Building a Right-Line Ecosystem

October 21, 2022

Rapper Ye’s purchase of right-wing social media app Parler may do little to revive the struggling platform. But seen as one piece of a larger puzzle of billionaires buying, creating and investing in social media apps, the acquisition could further cement the power of ultra-rich men to shape the online ecosystem to suit their own ideological opinions.

Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, is part of a new wave of high profile billionaires – also including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and former President Trump – who are investing millions in platforms with the declared intention to allow users, including themselves, to say what they want without the constraint of rules aimed at limiting abusive content.

The market for social media apps that espouse this more lax content moderation philosophy, largely allowing racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny and conspiracy theories banned on mainstream sites, is crowded. While none of these platforms, which cater to right-wing audiences, have user numbers comparable to mainstream sites, experts warn that the power of alternative sites to shape online narratives on elections and other burning events should not be underestimated. – especially as the deep pockets of billionaires fuel their capacity for growth.

Jared Holt, senior research director at ISD Global, said the consolidation of social media market power among the hyper-rich was “already a pretty sketchy issue, even if we think about ‘trustworthy’ mainstream platforms. “, subject to the whims of their CEOs, the Mark Zuckerbergs and Jack Dorseys of the world.

“This issue has really come to the fore a bit more now that we’ve seen individuals who have questionable or far-right views for technology trying to get into the fold,” Holt said.

Ye announced his intention to buy Parler in the wake of his expulsion from Twitter and Instagram, after he posted anti-Semitic content that violated the platforms’ policies. The move followed a pattern similar to that taken by Trump when he launched his Truth Social app after being kicked off platforms over posts deemed to incite violence around the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

Meanwhile, Musk, the world’s richest man, is getting into the game by looking to take over a mainstream site – Twitter. The Tesla CEO is apparently on the right track, after a difficult six months, to take over the social media company and realize his vision for a “free speech” platform, one he describes as having moderation. of minimal content and likely leaving banned figures like Trump back on.

“Is it a sign of a healthy democracy and a healthy social media landscape that rich men can just write a check and buy and create their own social media platforms like this?” said Bridget Todd, director of communications for feminist group UltraViolet.

“I would say no. I think the fact that Elon Musk can just write a check and buy Twitter really indicates that something has gone seriously wrong in terms of the health and safety of our digital ecosystem,” she added.

Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, in particular, has raised alarm bells among experts who warn it could lead to the spread of more hate speech and misinformation. Jennifer Grygiel, an associate professor at Syracuse University, argued that while Musk will guarantee “his right to say what he wants”, the general public – regardless of their political ideology – cannot expect the same thing.

“It’s still about Musk’s speech, and it’s really, really rich,” Grygiel said.

Experts also warn of the potential for spreading misinformation on one of the most successful alternative sites in building a large user base: the Rumble video platform. Peter Thiel, the conservative venture capitalist who was an early investor in Facebook, invested in Rumble last year.

Rumble has amassed power by serving as a YouTube alternative for right-wing personalities and incendiary content, and has partnered with other sites, including Trump’s Truth Social, to deliver video content.

Rumble hit 107.5 million visits in August, up from around 87 million in July and around 68 million in June, according to data from Similarweb. By comparison, Truth Social received around 9 million visits in August, based on the data.

Last month, Rumble became a publicly traded company through a deal with a blank check company. Its market cap is estimated at around $2 billion.

“Rumble is here to stay. And I think they’re going to be the next big disinformation factor. In 2024, they will be the biggest problem for misinformation, disinformation and extremism. Because they have the infrastructure and the ability to scale,” said Angelo Carusone, president of left-leaning watchdog group Media Matters.

Rumble has already become a place where content creators can livestream Trump rallies as they risk being removed for election misinformation on YouTube, and are amplified by right-wing figures directing their subscribers to Rumble for video content. , Carusone said.

The video medium also poses particular threats, experts say. On the one hand, it is possible that deepfakes will emerge and impact national and local elections. Imran Ahmed, Founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, warned that video is the “next truly disturbing frontier” because of the additional challenges video presents for moderating content as opposed to text, which is easier to filter. .

While Rumble’s stats top those of its right-wing peers, it pales in comparison to YouTube’s estimated 33 billion visits in August, according to data from Similarweb.

But experts warn that online content, whether on Parler, Truth Social, Rumble or beyond, is not siloed to the site from which it originated. Trump’s posts on Truth Social are regularly shared as screenshots on Twitter and Facebook.

Efforts by mainstream companies to remove non-compliant content appearing on their own platforms from the web are also flawed. Ye’s deleted tweets that led to his suspension continued to circulate in screenshots on Twitter and other sites, for example.

The tech giants’ broader move to deplatform Parler as a whole last year was more successful.

Parler usage spiked in January 2021 following mainstream platforms’ crackdown on inflammatory posts related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the banning of Trump’s accounts. The site received around 44.85 million visits that month at its peak, according to data from Similarweb.

But Parler faced a steep decline after the app was pulled from Apple and Google’s app stores and from the website by Amazon Web Services. It never regained the steam it once had, even after it was brought back online with a new host and restored to the app stores. Site traffic has fallen to around 1.2 million visits per month over the past 18 months, according to data from Similarweb.

A month before Ye announced he was buying Parler, however, the company’s CEO, George Farmer, said it was entering a “new era” that goes “beyond the confines of a single platform.” social media form of freedom of expression”. In a further restructuring as Parliament Technologies, Inc. and a $16 million Series B financing, the company is expanding into the cloud services space through the acquisition of the company from Dynascale private cloud.

It’s part of what Farmer, who is married to Ye’s friend and conservative pundit Candace Owens, said is helping Parler fuel the “irreversible” future.

Diving into the cloud services industry could give Parler, and other alternative sites that seek to allow the spread of hate speech and misinformation under the guise of “free speech,” more options to stay online without using the services provided by the main companies in the field.

Not all alternative platforms will thrive, or even survive, in a few years, Carusone said. But he said a major concern was the groundwork emerging platforms are creating to build “important pillars of the information landscape.”

“Because [the billionaires investing in such platforms] are flooding the area a bit in terms of investment, in terms of capacity building, in terms of infrastructure — two or three years from now, when you think back to that time, that’s going to help explain why it seems, again, the right wing has this huge advantage,” he added.

And the influence of particular individuals with outsized power in the social media landscape could be massive and devastating, warns Holt.

“When things go wrong and things go wrong, I think it becomes very obvious that social media in the wrong hands can be used to produce terrible results,” Holt said, noting that foreign powers were carrying out influence campaigns and groups organizing the riot in the Capitol. January 6th.

“[Social media] has this huge hold on society, and the power in these companies is concentrated in a handful of hyper-rich people who have their own agendas and pursuits and worldviews, and the choices that those people at the top make as a whole matter a lot” , he added. “Even a small tweet can dramatically change the course of history at this point.”