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After the US Capitols riot last week, right-wing social platform, Parler, was put under the microscope. It was already on people’s radar as a website that harbored right-wing extremist, but it wasn’t until now that companies started taking action against it.
First, Google and Apple removed the app from their app stores, and then Amazon booted it from its web hosting services. By doing so, Amazon effectively removed Parler from the internet.
Parler’s CEO has stated that no one will touch them now and, in an act of desperation, is suing Amazon over the shutdown.
As reported by TechCrunch, the lawsuit, filed in the U.S. Western District Court, is all over the place, with it stating Amazon is motivated by a “political animus” before never mentioning that again. They called it a conspiracy to help Twitter. It references “Hang Mike Pence” trending on Twitter without mentioning the whole part about terrorists chanting that at the US Capitol and that people on Twitter were condemning it.
Parler continues to obviously ignore the hate and threats on its platform. As TechCrunch reports, “By way of contrast, one Parler post cited by Amazon says that “we need to start systematicly [sic] assasinating [sic] #liberal leaders, liberal activists, #blm leaders and supporters,” and so on.”
That post referenced by Amazon is not a one-off thing. Our own research saw many similar posts on Parler with large amounts of likes and comments.
It will be interesting to see how this goes, but I can’t imagine much will happen from this.
UPDATE 1/13/2021 8:30 AM ET: An Amazon spokesperson has reached out, providing a statement:
“There is no merit to these claims. AWS provides technology and services to customers across the political spectrum, and we respect Parler’s right to determine for itself what content it will allow.
However, it is clear that there is significant content on Parler that encourages and incites violence against others, and that Parler is unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove this content, which is a violation of our terms of service. We made our concerns known to Parler over a number of weeks and during that time we saw a significant increase in this type of dangerous content, not a decrease, which led to our suspension of their services Sunday evening.”
UPDATE 1/14/2021 10:31 AM ET: Parler’s CEO spoke exclusively with Reuters and stated that the social app might never come back.
UPDATE 1/18/2021 9:46 AM ET: Parler has resurfaced thanks to a Russian tech company and now CEO John Matze is saying it could be up and running again by the end of January.
UPDATE 1/22/2021 10:15 AM ET: A Washington judge has denied social network Parler’s demand to be reinstated on Amazon Web Services.
What do you think? Does Parler have a case? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
Editors’ Recommendations:
- In need of a safe space, Republicans head to the Twitter-like Parler in droves
- Twitter and Amazon are finally doing something about QAnon
- Elon Musk goes to Twitter to tell people to stop using Messenger and start using Signal
- Facebook is removing the infamous “Like” button from public pages
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