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Silicon Valley continues to turn its back on social media app Parler for endangering public safety by hosting content that could incite further violence, in the wake of last week’s deadly attack on the United States Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington DC.
The attack, described by incoming US President Joe Biden as “one of the darkest days in US history,” saw supporters of President Trump storming and looting the building in protest at the outcome of the raids. US presidential election in November 2020.
Five people were killed during the violence, including a police officer, which took place on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, and details have since begun to emerge about the role the Parler app may have played in allowing the perpetrators to coordinate the attack. .
Since the application was launched on the market in September 2018, its creators have positioned it as a social networking site that defends the rights of freedom of expression of users and has effectively served as a safe haven for people whose actions and statements have given place to be prohibited. more conventional services, including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
Since the attack on the Capitol, Computer Weekly understands that posts about Parler have continued to appear that appear to encourage Trump supporters to rally together and storm Washington DC again on January 19, 2020 to disrupt President-elect Biden’s inauguration the next day. . .
This, in turn, led public cloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) to terminate its hosting agreement with Parler as of midnight on Sunday, January 10, 2021, on the grounds that facilitating these discussions violates its terms. of service.
This followed the news that Google and Apple had taken steps to remove Parler from their respective app stores over the weekend.
“Recently, we have seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. It is clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service, ”the AWS Trust and Safety team said in an email to Parler’s chief policy officer, obtained by Buzzfeed.
The letter goes on to cite 98 separate violations of Amazon’s terms of service over the “past weeks” as one more factor in its decision, adding that when offensive content is reported to the site, it is removed, but not always with the urgency required. .
He also criticizes Parler’s promise to better monitor the site’s content by relying on volunteer moderators, stating that these people will be no match for the “rapidly growing number of violent posts” it hosts.
Since news of AWS’s closure broke, such posts have also included threats of violent acts carried out against Amazon’s own data centers in retaliation.
Computer Weekly reached out to AWS for further comment on its decision to cut ties with Parler, but the company said it has no comment to make at this time.
Parler CEO John Matze responded publicly by confirming that Amazon’s decision to boot it from its public cloud platform has led other tech companies to turn their backs on Parler, meaning it is likely to remain offline for longer than originally planned.
Matze initially told site supporters that Amazon’s decision could result in the site going dark for up to a week, as it set out to rebuild the platform “from scratch”, and had “many [alternative providers] competing for our business ”.
He wrote: “This was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to end competition in the marketplace. We were too successful too fast. You can expect the war against competition and freedom of expression to continue, but don’t rule us out. “
In a follow-up statement, before Parler went offline, Matze confirmed that other AWS alternatives, with the server capacity needed to host the site, have also “closed doors” on the company.
“We will probably be down more than expected. This is not due to software restrictions, we have our software and everyone’s data ready to go, ”said Matze, in a statement that circulated to Parler’s user base.
“Rather [is] that Amazon, Google, and Apple’s statements to the press about removing our access have caused most of our other providers to drop their support as well. And most of the people with enough servers to host us have closed their doors on us. We will update everyone and update the press when we are back online. “
