Why Parler could soon disappear from the Internet

On Sunday, Amazon will remove Parler, the conservative social media platform that brands itself as a “free speech” alternative to sites like Twitter, from its web host, potentially ending a site that has been become a nexus of extremism. .

Amazon’s decision, which was first reported by BuzzFeed News on Saturday, comes after the Apple App Store and Google Play Store decided to remove Parler from their respective app stores this week, limiting its potential reach.

The push to take action against Parler also follows this week’s decisions by Twitter and Facebook to ban President Donald Trump from heir platforms for inciting violence, thereby depriving the president of what could have been an alternative to those services. . Many conservatives aggrieved by those platforms have fled to Parler in recent months.

It’s a sudden downfall for the app, which has come under fierce scrutiny this week for its role in providing a forum for the extremists who stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, leaving at least five people dead.

Before the attack, Trump supporters used Parler, as well as services like Gab and other online forums like TheDonald.win, a Reddit-like spinoff built on top of a previously banned community on Reddit’s main site, to plan their assault.

“WE THE PEOPLE … are done with you,” said a Parler post ahead of Wednesday’s violence, according to the Washington Post. “Do all our high and low enemies want a war? Well, you are ordering one. … For the American people on the ground in DC today and throughout this great nation, be prepared for anything. “

Amazon’s decision to evict Parler from its Amazon Web Services cloud hosting service could effectively remove the site from the Internet entirely when Take effect just before midnight (PST) on Sunday if Parler cannot find a new host by then.

That’s not impossible: alternative web hosting services exist, although Amazon Web Services controls most of the hosting in the cloud with about 40 percent of the internet, according to Verge.

But it doesn’t seem like it’s going to happen right away. In a Saturday night post on the site, shared on Twitter by CNN’s Brian Fung, John Matze, CEO of Parler, said that “there is a possibility that Parler will not be available on the Internet for up to a week” following Amazon’s decision.

“This was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to end competition in the marketplace,” Matze wrote. “You can expect the war on competition and free speech to continue, but don’t rule us out.”

While Parler was seen as a small, but growing rival to sites like Twitter, an email from Amazon Web Services obtained by Buzzfeed claims that Parler was fired for more prosaic reasons: that he has seen “a steady increase in this violent content.” which violates Amazon’s terms of use.

“It is clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service,” wrote a team from AWS Trust and Safety.

Widespread calls for violence, and the refusal to moderate them in any meaningful way, were also Parler’s undoing when it comes to app stores. Apple’s ban comes after the site failed to provide Apple with a more rigorous content moderation plan to crack down on violent rhetoric.

And Google offered a similar justification on Friday, describing Parler’s role as a hub for violent extremism as a “continuing and urgent threat to public safety.”

Parler has a problem with far-right violence

Some Parler users did themselves no favors in their response to news of Amazon’s decision on Saturday, instead highlighting why Amazon acted in the first place.

In a post, shared by John Paczkowski from Buzzfeed, a Parler user says Amazon’s decision “sounds like war.”

“It would be a shame if someone with explosives training paid a visit to some AWS data centers, the location of which is public knowledge,” wrote Parler user @ronglaister on Saturday.

It’s such posts that underscore the central issue with Parler, and probably what pushed the major tech companies to act this week.

Although Parler calls itself a “free speech” platform, its status as an alternative to Twitter means that it has ended up attracting a type of speech since its genesis in 2018. Specifically, the kind of speech that would get the average user kicked off Twitter: disinformation, white supremacism, anti-Semitism, and outright calls for violence.

It is worth noting, as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) does in a November post on the site, that Parler is “not an extremist platform” per se, and its users span a wide swath of conservatism, as well as other ideologies.

But, as the ADL notes, “the site hosts a significant and growing number of users who adhere to a wide variety of ideologies, mostly right-wing extremists.” And those, by all appearances, are the ones who got Parler in trouble.

Not only was violence planned and incited at the site before extremists stormed the Capitol on Wednesday and killed a Capitol police officer, but more was being planned ahead of President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday. January 20.

“Many of us will return on January 19, 2021, bearing Our weapons, in support of Our nation’s determination, that [sic] The world will never forget !!! “one user wrote in Parler this week after Wednesday’s attack, according to NPR.” We will come in numbers that no permanent army or law enforcement agency can match. “

Another user, prior to the attack, used Parler to solicit feedback on who the insurgents should kill first, according to BuzzFeed News.

“Who would you like to see ‘shipped’ first? 1) Nancy Pelosi 2) John Roberts 3) Pence 4) other (name) I was leaning towards Nancy, but it might have to be Pence, ”they wrote, along with a GIF of a rope.

That particular threat made the leap into the real world: pro-Trump insurgents erected a full gallows in front of the Capitol on Wednesday, other ropes were found around the hill, and the mob singing “Hang Pence.”

Unfortunately, the takedown of Parler will not end such calls for violence: As NBC’s Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins have highlighted, similar violent rhetoric has flourished on message boards like 8kun and TheDonald, as well as on encrypted communication apps like Telegram.

Parler had a large user base, around 10 million people in November 2020, and it grew even more this week; according to a TechCrunch story, it has been installed nearly 270,000 times in US app stores since Wednesday.

But Amazon’s decision to remove Parler from its web host, as well as the removals by Apple and Google, could leave a mark. Without access to Apple’s App Store, Parler’s executive Amy Peikoff told Tucker Carlson on Saturday, “We’re toasting.”