Trump Supporters Favoured The App
Jeff Bezos’ company kicked Parler off its web hosting services, meaning that if Parler doesn’t find another host, the social media platform will go offline starting last Sunday.
In an email obtained by the outlet, Amazon told Parler’s chief policy officer that the app’s content inciting violence violated its terms of service.
“Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service. [W]e cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others,” the email says.
“Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST,” the email continues.
Earlier Saturday, Apple also suspended Parler, which describes itself as “unbiased social media,” from it’s application store, citing it has failed to follow Apple’s guidelines by not removing harmful content from the platform.
Apple’s notice said Parler’s responses to an earlier warning were inadequate, including Parler’s defense that it had been taking violent rhetoric on its platform “very seriously for weeks” and that it had a moderation plan “for the time being,” according to Apple.
Apple’s decision followed a similar move by Google on Friday to drop Parler from the Google Play Store.
On Friday, Twitter also permanently suspended President Trump’s personal account citing “the risk of further incitement of violence.”
Matze wrote in a message on his platform that Apple “will be banning Parler until we give up free speech, institute broad and invasive policies like Twitter and Facebook and we become a surveillance platform by pursuing guilt of those who use Parler before innocence.”
“They claim it is due to violence on the platform,” Matze wrote of Apple, whom he also accused of being a “software monopoly,”
“We will try our best to move to a new provider right now as we have many competing for our business, however Amazon, Google and Apple purposefully did this as a coordinated effort knowing our options would be limited and knowing this would inflict the most damage right as President Trump was banned from the tech companies,” Parler CEO John Matze said in a statement.