After drawing fire from AWS, Google and Apple, Parler isn’t staying out of the spotlight and waiting for things to cool down. Instead, the controversial social media app which has gone dark after its servers were shut down has sued Amazon and alleges the decision violates antitrust laws.
Parler, a social media platform for conservatives found itself at the center of controversy in the wake of the recent U.S. Capitol riots where protesters stormed the building to stop President-elect Joe Biden’s election certification. Just hours after Amazon AWS shut down its servers after deeming the app a “very real risk to public safety,†the Twitter-like platform filed a lawsuit against the cloud computing heavyweight on Monday in a federal court in Seattle. The app was also booted off Google and Apple app stores for failing to implement a content moderation program.
The Twitter rival alleges conspiracy to restrain trade amounting to antitrust violations, breach of contract, and interference in its business contracts with its users. Last week, the social app gained over 240,000 users including a single day spike of 210,000 on Friday, and had hoped to continue its torrid streak this week.
As a result, the company in its suit is seeking “a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against Defendant Amazon Web Services to prevent it from shutting down Parler’s account at the end of today [Monday]. Doing so is the equivalent of pulling the plug on a hospital patient on life support. It will kill Parler’s business—at the very time it is set to skyrocket,†Parler said in the lawsuit.
The company in its antitrust lawsuit argues that Amazon is required to provide a 30-day notice period before terminating the web hosting service. Also, the social platform claims Amazon’s use of the word ‘suspension’ is misleading as the cloud computing giant intended to terminate the services. “This is not action AWS would take for a temporary suspension, but rather for a permanent termination. Thus, whatever words AWS used, it was terminating the Agreement with Parler.â€
Parler also alleges Amazon’s decision is anti-competitive since it aims to stifle the competition as it feared the company was a serious threat to Twitter. In its suit, the company mentioned Twitter’s multi-year deal signed with Amazon last month, alleging that the move was motivated by ‘political animus.’
On its part, Amazon says the lawsuit lacks merit. “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,†Amazon noted.
See Also: Parler Goes Offline After AWS Shuts Down Its Servers
Meanwhile, Parler found an unlikely ally in an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyer who toldOpens a new window the New York Times’ Davey Alba, “It’s understandable that no company would want to be associated with the repellent speech that is now rampant. But there is a difference between a social media platform like Twitter, which is a speech community, deciding who its members are what its guidelines should be, and a company like Amazon that really holds the keys to the internet.â€
A researcher, @donk_enby on Twitter has archived 80 GB of Parler content (that smacks of racism) since January 6, the day of the siege and terms it ‘incriminatingOpens a new window .’ The researcher clarified that only publicly available posts were archived. “I don’t have your email address, phone or credit card number. unless you posted it yourself on parler,†she tweeted.
I am now crawling URLs of all videos uploaded to Parler. Sequentially from latest to oldest. VIDXXX.txt files coming up, 50k chunks, there will be 1.1M URLs total:
This may include things from deleted/private posts.
— crash override (@donk_enby) January 10, 2021Opens a new window
Menlo Park tech giant Facebook has announced that until Inauguration Day, the social network will remove any content with the phrase ‘stop the steal’ across Facebook and Instagram.
Let us know if you enjoyed reading this news on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!