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Parler sues Amazon for taking down website

Parler sues Amazon for taking down website

Parler has filed a lawsuit against Amazon. AWS was until recently the party that provided the hosting for the social medium but stopped doing so after the commotion surrounding the storming of the Capitol.

In the 18-page complaint, the social medium writes that Amazon’s decision to stop hosting Parler’s platform is political in nature. According to Parler, Amazon is helping Twitter eliminate its competitors.

Parler demands that AWS be forced to resume Parler’s services. AWS should also refrain from suspending, terminating or failing to provide any services. Furthermore, Parler demands to be compensated for the damage it has suffered from being offline.

Explosive growth

In the complaint, Parler states that the timing for taking down the website is terrible, as the medium was going through explosive growth. Moreover, Parler claims to have no options other than AWS, effectively killing the platform.

Parler is a social medium that markets itself as an alternative to Twitter and Facebook, emphasising free speech. In practice, this mainly meant little moderation and right-wing extremist ideas being freely shared.

Incitement to violence

These ideas eventually led to the storming of the Capitol on 6 January. After this, various social media took action against messages inciting violence. However, various parties felt that Parler did not intervene sufficiently, after which both Google and Apple decided to remove the Parler app from the Play Store and App Store. Eventually, AWS took the entire website offline after it found 98 messages on the platform inciting violence.