Seattle, WA – Amazon has removed Parler from their Amazon Web Services hosting servers, completely shutting down the free speech social media network. Now, Parler is suing.
John Kruzel, a reporter with The Hill, tweeted Monday that the lawsuit is for antitrust violations, breach of contract, and unlawful business interference.
Kruzel reported that Parler is asking a federal judge to issue an order for Amazon to reinstate them.
The lawsuit comes after Parler was shut down by Amazon Sunday night.
BREAKING: Parler sues Amazon for antitrust violation, breach of contract and unlawful business interference. Asks federal judge to order Amazon to reinstate the platform
— John Kruzel (@johnkruzel) January 11, 2021
The shutdown comes after both Apple and Google removed the Parler app from their app stores for not censoring user content, according to Fox Business.
Parler CEO John Matze confirmed Sunday that the shutdown would take them offline.
“We’re working and scrambling to do this, but it’s not something that you can do really quickly so there’s a good chance that we will be down for a while,” Matze said, according to Fox Business.
Google announced Friday that they had removed the Parler app from their app store for not censoring speech.
Apple announced at the time that they would also remove the app in 24 hours if Parler didn’t implement a plan to moderate content.
Apple followed up by removing the app from their app store.
Parler is a social media network which has promoted itself as the free speech network after other social media companies were criticized for censoring conservative speech.
Unlike other free speech platforms which failed to attract a mainstream userbase, hundreds of thousands of mainstream conservatives have been joining Parler after other networks increased censorship of President Trump.
Blue Lives Matter started utilizing Parler after Facebook cut the reach of all non-mainstream news sites leading up to the presidential election, and started pushing content from left-wing media sites like CNN.
After the riot at the Capitol Wednesday, activists located posts on Parler of random users voicing support for violence.
Yesterday, we asked @AppStore and @GooglePlay to enforce their own Terms of Service on Parler based on the sheer number of violent threats on the platform with #PullParler.
— Sleeping Giants (@slpng_giants) January 8, 2021
Look at the VERY CLEAR terms set by these two app stores below: https://t.co/SpPuSCUxy4
The activists demanded that Apple and Google remove the app from their stores.
Google responded by removing the app Friday.
“In order to protect user safety on Google Play, our longstanding policies require that apps displaying user-generated content have moderation policies and enforcement that removes egregious content like posts that incite violence,” a Google spokesperson said, according to Axios.
With the Parler app removed from the app stores, iPhone and Android users will be unable to download the app.
Anybody who already has the app can continue using it, but Parler will be unable to provide updates and over time the app may stop functioning even if they find another hosting provider.
Holly Matkin
Sandy Malone
