Other services, including Gab and Gettr, are also part of what Ben Decker, CEO of digital threat analysis company Memetica, calls an “alt social media ecosystem,” fueled by “the deplatforming of high-profile conservative” figures from other larger platforms in recent years.

Separately, Peter Thiel, an influential venture capitalist and Republican donor, invested in Rumble, a conservative alternative to YouTube. In a slide deck, Trump’s digital media company touted the ambitious possibility of creating not just alternatives to the major social media platforms but also to cloud computing products like Amazon Web Services and payment service Stripe. 6 insurrection, former President Donald Trump backed Truth Social, an alternative to Twitter. West, who has legally changed his name to Ye, is just the latest controversial figure to bet on a nascent, alternative set of social media platforms favored by conservatives and members of the far-right who profess to feel outrage over content moderation on more mainstream services.Īfter being banned from Twitter following the Jan. Now, the rapper has agreed to acquire Parler, an alternative social platform popular with conservatives, to prevent ever having “to fear being removed from social media again.” One week ago, Kanye West was temporarily suspended from Twitter for posting antisemitic tweets.

Elon Musk by J.T. Owens