Parler Sues Amazon After Being Booted Off Cloud

Conservative social network Parler is suing Amazon after the eCommerce giant’s web services division abruptly pulled the plug on cloud hosting for the startup, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday (Jan. 11).

In a complaint filed Monday in Seattle federal court, Parler alleged that the action by Amazon Web Services (AWS) was due to politics and competition. AWS effectively brought Parler’s operations to a standstill after tossing it out of the cloud. The company is seeking a temporary restraining order to prevent Amazon from removing Parler from its cloud servers.

In a statement emailed to PYMNTS, an AWS spokesperson said Parler’s claims had “no merit.”

“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,” the spokesperson said. “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.”

Amazon said Saturday (Jan. 9) that it was ending its relationship with Parler because the social network could not adequately monitor controversial content on its platform. Big technology companies started restricting content they saw as dangerous following last week’s attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“Over the past several weeks, we’ve reported 98 examples to Parler of posts that clearly encourage and incite violence,” Amazon Web Services told a Parler representative on Saturday, according to court documents, per news reports.

Founded in 2018, the social network favored by the far right accelerated in popularity following the November 2020 U.S. election. Apple and Google previously withdrew Parler from their app stores.

Parler also alleged in the complaint that Amazon had a double standard, giving Twitter a multi-year web-hosting contract.

“AWS’s decision to effectively terminate Parler’s account is apparently motivated by political animus. It is also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter, ” according to the complaint.

“As more of a libertarian, more of a minimal government type of person, I hate relying on the legal system,” Parler Chief Executive John Matze told the Journal on Sunday (Jan. 10). “I know we have to.”

Stripe recently halted payments processing related to President Donald Trump’s campaign website for violating the rule against inciting violence. Stripe made the decision following last week’s riot at the Capitol.