By Joel Rosenblatt and Chris Dolmetsch | Bloomberg
Amazon.com Inc. says Parler LLC isn’t only dangerous to law and order in the nation’s capital, but to the tech giant’s own staff.
To justify to a judge why it suspended web-hosting service for the conservative social media site, Amazon executives cited threats by Parler users to delivery drivers and staff at the e-commerce giant — as well as concern that Parler failed to police violent content both before and after the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
A showdown looms Thursday in Seattle federal court over Parler’s complaint that Amazon’s action is a politically loaded attack on an upstart’s efforts to compete with social media behemoths Twitter and Facebook. But even as Parler cries foul that the loss of web-hosting…
Parler—the rightwing social media platform that sought to carve out a niche for itself by refusing to moderate conspiracy theories, hate speech, and incitements to violence—is searching for a new home.
The platform got kicked offline after extremists used Parler to coordinate the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. But it wasn’t American courts, elected officials, or law enforcement agents who gave it the boot: That responsibility fell to a trio of Big Tech companies whose infrastructure helps form the backbone of the internet.
On Jan. 9, Apple and Google removed Parler from the App Store and the Android Marketplace, respectively, actions that prevented new users from downloading the app. The next day, Amazon Web Services dropped Parler as a client, which severed the social media…
In a dunning crackdown on Parler, Amazon is jettisoning the right-wing social network from its web-hosting service, Buzzfeed News reported late Saturday.
That means Parler, a favorite of extremist Donald Trump supporters, will be off the internet as of midnight Sunday unless — or until — it can find another host.
Amazon took the action because of Parler’s lack of restrictions over users’ calls for violence, which violate the company’s terms of service, in the wake of the lethal attack on the Capitol Wednesday that left five people dead, including a police officer.
Parler has most recently been swamped with messages encouraging “Patriots” to march on Washington D.C. with weapons on Jan. 19, Buzzfeed reported.
“We’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on…