- Kanye West said Parler would be for people who were restricted by other sites, per Bloomberg.
- The rapper said he knew it was time to buy his own site after getting booted off Twitter and Instagram.
Kanye West says he plans to make social-media site Parler a platform for those who have been restricted by bigger, existing platforms.
Bloomberg reported the news on Monday.
West, who now goes by Ye, agreed on Monday to buy the right-wing platform that bills itself as a "free-speech platform." It came after West was locked out of his Twitter account after making antisemitic comments.
After the deal was announced, Ye spoke with Bloomberg about his plans for Parler and why he decided to purchase the site.
"We're using this as a net for the people who have been bullied by the thought police to come and speak their mind," he told Bloomberg. "Express how you feel. Express what's tied up inside of you. Express what's been haunting you."
Ye added that he uses social media as his therapist.
"When I got kicked off of Instagram and Twitter at the time, I knew it was time to acquire my own platform," Ye told Bloomberg. "People had talked about it and mentioned this idea for years, but enough was enough."
The rapper has 31.5 million followers on Twitter and 18.2 million on Instagram. In comparison, around 2,800 Parler users were following Ye as of early Monday.
Ye, who has previously faced criticism for wearing a "White Lives Matter" t-shirt, said in the interview with Bloomberg that he was "willing to put everything at risk because they've already taken enough from me for differences of opinion."
Parler came under scrutiny after the storming of the US Capitol on January 6 when some users took to the social-media platform to post violent content. As a result, Google and Apple banned Parler from their stores and Amazon Web Services removed it from its web hosting service.
In response to Parler's announcement about Ye acquiring the platform, Parlement Technologies CEO George Farmer said the company would be "honored to help him achieve his goals."