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Tech giants Amazon, Apple and Google have cut ties with Parler, the popular social media platform among some conservatives, potentially leaving it without a home on the internet as of midnight Sunday, even as its number of users has recently increased.
The three megacorporations have accused the platform of continuing to post messages inciting violence even after Wednesday’s deadly assault on the United States Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.
If Parler cannot find a new hosting partner before 0800 GMT on Monday, when Amazon discontinues its services, the site will not be able to function.
A day after Twitter permanently suspended the president’s main account on Friday, Parler remained the most downloaded app in the United States from Apple’s app store.
The social network, launched in 2018, works much like Twitter, with profiles that people can follow and “parliamentarians” rather than tweets. Freedom of expression is its reason for being declared.
Based in Henderson, Nevada, Parler was founded by John Matze, a young computer engineer, and Rebekah Mercer, a prominent Republican donor.
In its early days, the platform attracted a crowd of ultra-conservative or even far-right users.
Now it attracts many more traditional Republican voices.
Fox News star host Sean Hannity has 7.6 million followers on Parler; his colleague Tucker Carlson has 4.4 million.
There are also elected officials, including Republicans Devin Nunes, a Congresswoman from California, and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.
Its recent growth has increased in recent days as new users, angered by Trump’s Twitter ban, flocked to the app.
Trump’s accounts have also been suspended by other major social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitch in the wake of the violence on Capitol Hill.
That has sent more of the president’s ardent supporters to conservative platforms that include both Parler and Gab.
Its success caught the attention of Google, which decided on Friday night to remove Parler from its app store due to posts the internet giant said incited violence, as well as what it deemed too informal an approach to take. moderate content.
A day later, Apple followed suit.
Those moves made things difficult for Parler, but did not completely block it: Users who already had the app could continue to access it, while new users could use workarounds to install or access it on the Internet.
Amazon’s decision, on the other hand, directly threatens Parler’s online presence, and its CEO Matze is not optimistic.
“All the providers, from the text messaging services to the email providers and our attorneys, also abandoned us on the same day,” he said on Fox. “They are trying to falsely claim that we were somehow responsible for the events of the six “of January, when the Capitol was invaded.
“It is devastating.”
Matze said it would be difficult to reconnect quickly because potential service providers said they did not want to collaborate by challenging Google or Apple.
Parler was given 24 hours to find an alternate host, but Matze said, “Where are you going to find 300 to 500 servers in a 24-hour window? … It’s an impossible feat.”
With the tech giants making their opposition clear, conservative sites like Parler will likely have to find ways to adapt.
The DLive video streaming service, used by several protesters during the Capitol invasion, shut down seven of its channels and removed more than 100 videos from the site.
Other services may need to follow the example of another popular site on the far right, Gab.
That platform drew harsh criticism in 2018 when investigators discovered that the shooter who killed 11 people in an attack on a Pittsburgh synagogue had previously posted anti-Semitic messages on the site.
Gab, which was already at odds with Apple and Google, installed its own servers so as not to depend on outside vendors.
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