Last night, after facing calls from an employee union to stop hosting Parler through their web services platform, Amazon went ahead and joined Apple and Google in severing their relationship with Parler.
Union demands aside, it’s likely that Amazon would’ve done this anyway, as it comes following a seemingly coordinated assault from big tech to take down the alternative social media platform. Google banned Parler from their Google Play app store, while Apple banned Parler from theirs. Prior to the ban, Parler was the #1 app in the store.
Immediately following its ban, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey posted a tweet subtly celebrating the hardships of a competitor.
— jack⚡️ (@jack) January 10, 2021
In an email to Parler, Amazon said “Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. [W]e cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others. Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST.”
The type of content on Parler that violates their terms can also be found on Facebook and Twitter, who face no consequences for it.
In response to the news, Parler CEO John Matze said that as a result, it is possible “Parler will be unavailable on the internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch. We prepared for events like this by never relying on Amazon’s proprietary infrastructure and building bare metal products. We will try our best to move to a new provider right now as we have many competing for our business.”
Disclosure: Dan Bongino is an investor in Parler
