Days after being suspended from the cloud hosting service of Amazon, Parler has sued the company alleging that the move was a breach of contract. The social media platform in a complaint has urged a federal court to issue a temporary restraining order (TRO) against Amazon Web Services. Parler has a strong far-right user base. It gained popularity off late when supporters of US President Donald Trump started using it to express their opinions as other social media cracked down the posts inciting violence. It started facing flack for failing to efficiently check the content that had the potential to incite offline violence. This is why Amazon suspended the social media platform from web services.
But now, the social media platform has alleged the decision of Amazon as a ‘death blow’ to it. “Without access to Amazon Web Services, Parler has no way to get online and this means that it is finished. And any delay in passing temporary restraining order could sound Parler’s death knell,” the complaint said. It said that people like Donald Trump and others are moving to other platforms as it is not online. Parler alleged that the move by Amazon is another step towards eliminating competition by removing a player from the market. It said that the company breached the contract by not giving 30 days’ notice before termination.
In a letter sent to Parler, Amazon Web Services said that it saw several posts in recent weeks that clearly incite and encourage violence. The letter, written to Parler Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff, also had screenshots of several examples. Amazon Web Services said that it witnessed a steady rise in such content and all of them violate our terms. The webs service provided clearly states that Parler is not equipped with an effective process to make sure that all the terms of service are followed. Replying to reports of the lawsuit filed by Parler, Amazon said that it has ‘no merit.’