Amazon asks a federal judge to keep Parler offline, saying the conservative media site has overruled calls from the Amazon Web Services division that Parler oversees violent content both before and after the Capitol uprising.
The tech company’s legal appeal on Tuesday came up in response Parler’s lawsuit violating antitrust laws and breach of contract after Amazon suspended Parler’s account, effectively banning it from the Internet.
Amazon Web Services launched Parler from its cloud services just after midnight Pacific Time Monday, with the site being unreachable from 4:30 a.m. ET. Amazon said it dropped Parler because it was unsure of the site’s ability to track content on its platform that promotes or incites violence.
“This case is not about suppressing speech or stifling views,” Amazon lawyers said in a lawsuit. Instead, this case is about Parler’s demonstrated reluctance and inability to remove content from Amazon Web Services (‘AWS’) servers that threatens public safety, such as inciting and planning rape, torture, and murder on said government officials and individuals. “
Parler’s refusal to moderate content resulted in a “steady increase” of violent content on the network, in violation of Amazon’s terms of service, AWS claimed.
“First, Amazon must think they have a strong case here that would set a good precedent for the future. And second, Amazon wants the wider public – or at least the wider business community – to see their response here,” said Max Kornblith. , co-founder and head of growth at FairShake, a company that helps consumers resolve disputes with service providers through the arbitration process.
He noted that Amazon’s standard customer agreement would likely have allowed them to take the lawsuit out of public courts, if Amazon had wanted that route.
The platform’s right-wing popularity soared after the November election, and was seen as a likely way for President Donald Trump to reach his followers after booting from most mainstream media platforms following the siege of the Capitol on Wednesday. In addition to the Amazon move, Google and Apple have removed Parler from their app stores.
In his complaint filed Monday, Parler argued that “Amazon’s decision to effectively terminate Parler’s account is apparently motivated by political animus. It also apparently aims to reduce competition in the market for microblogging services in favor of Twitter”, he claimed.