Tag Archives: Hosting

Editor’s Note: Video from the Capitol riots last week.

(AP) – President Donald Trump has been kicked off of most mainstream social media platforms following his supporters’ siege on the U.S. Capitol. But it remains to be seen how fast or where — if anywhere — on the internet he will be able to reach his followers.

The far right-friendly Parler had been the leading candidate, at least until Google and Apple removed it from their app stores and Amazon booted it off its web hosting service just after midnight Pacific time early Monday.

Parler’s CEO said that could knock it offline for a week, though that might prove optimistic. And even if it finds a friendlier web-hosting service,…

AWS has revoked its hosting services from the “free speech” social network Parler after finding a number of posts inciting violence. 

Parler was founded in 2018 but drew increased attention earlier this month after Twitter’s decision to permanently suspend the account of US President Donald Trump. Like many of its Silicon Valley peers, Twitter has been accused of stifling debate, having a liberal bias and harming free speech.

Parler, the far-right social network favored by many Trump supporters, went offline on Sunday evening, apparently due to the withdrawal of web hosting services by Amazon’s AWS division.

Attempts by Variety to connect to the site on Monday arrived only at a largely blank screen with an error message announcing “this site can’t be reached.” Web trackers contacted by AFP reached the same conclusion.

#BREAKING Conservative social network site Parler forced offline: web trackers pic.twitter.com/rVXYXhWLBp

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) January 11, 2021

Earlier over the weekend, Amazon informed Parler, which boasts of taking a hands-off policy to content moderation, of the imminent loss of its internet hosting services. That came after Apple and Google banned Parler from their…

After Parler was banned on both the Apple and Google app stores for failing to curb violent and threatening content on its platform, the social media site is now completely offline as a result of Amazon terminating Parler’s web hosting services. The official Parler website now returns a 403 error, while its app is showing networking errors and can’t load content.

Amazon told Parler of its decision late Saturday, in a letter to chief policy officer Amy Peikoff. Its Amazon Web Service (AWS) “cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others,” the letter to Peikoff states, adding that Parler “poses a very real risk to public safety.”