aside from that, he might try to leverage this to appeal to MAGAs for some political play in the future too - the 'white lives matter' shirt shenanigans is further evidence of his desperation for attention & desire to appeal to a certain demographic
Greater transparency, with clear examples of what is allowed, and what is not allowed for each category of moderation would probably be helpful for more sites to implement.
A platform to vent political flame bait, misinformation, and their conspiracy theories with little resistance
If I could afford to buy these platforms I totally would. Then I would make Netflix series that delve into all the conspiracies given that I would own the rights to the conversations. Every season would revolve around the most popular narratives. Every topic would be on the table and not just surface coverage, I would hire many investigative journalists and private investigators. Sites like Reddit and 4chan would try hard to influence my episodes and I would totally let them. The end goal? Make money of course, and also let the world see how random and disingenuous public platforms can be and how easy it is to manipulate the masses or in some cases how half-truths can be molded into conspiracy.
Kayne's career hasn't declined (unlike maybe his mental health)? His music seems he's as popular as ever.
The ability to post legal speech publicly when he wants?
I’m wondering why you expected that? So far, every free-speech-maximalism platform has very quickly become an alt-right conspiracy platform, why would parler be different?
Well I'm not sure why you expected useful interesting content. The whole point of Parler is to be a home for these far-right extremists.
Good moderation is important on platforms where anyone can post anything otherwise misinformation and conspiracy theories will spread.
* A progressive data analyst at Civis Analytics Tweeted research on the efficacy of non-violent protests, and left-wing activists pressured his employer into firing him.
* A progressive journalist with The Intercept published an interview with a black man who felt that police brutality was a problem, but would have liked to see more attention for other problems in his community--similarly, activists (including coworkers) pressured his employer to terminate him until he eventually resigned.
* A university professor used a Chinese word that sounds vaguely like a slur in English, and the university was pressured into suspending him.
* A utility worker accidentally made the "OK" gesture, and activists pressured his employer into firing him.
* A boy wore a MAGA hat and the entirety of the mainstream media along with several celebrities sent a frothing mob after him, his parents, and his school falsely claiming (despite hours of publicly available video evidence) that he was participating in a racist tirade against a Native American elder and Vietnam veteran.
* A Google employee responded to a request on an internal message board with criticism of Google's hiring policies (specifically addressing how the company could foster more diversity), and left-wing activist employees pressured Google into firing him, and virtually the whole of the mainstream media falsely claimed he published an "anti-diversity screed" as a memo to the company.
No doubt Parler has become a right-wing hub, but for a good while anything that wasn't toeing the most extreme left-wing party line was considered to be "far-right extremism". There was some pretty legitimate demand for a free-speech platform, and I'm strongly of the opinion that if we were more tolerant to discussing some of these topics out in the open (which is in part to say, if our institutions were more aspirationally neutralist and objectivist), then fewer people would have found answers from far-right folks, and we would have less far-right extremism than we do today.