Amazon has told Parler that it will suspend the company’s AWS hosting services access. The news came on the same day that Apple suspended the social media app, which is a popular place for conservatives to flock to be able to speak freely. It also comes one day after Google removed it from the Play Store. The suspension will go into effect on Sunday. Unless Parler can find a new host before then, it will go offline.
In an email obtained by BuzzFeed News, a member of the Amazon Web Services Trust and Safety team told the company it violated its terms and services, saying that Amazon is unconvinced Parler will be able to effectively moderate its platform relying only on a team of volunteers.
“Over the past several weeks, we’ve reported 98 examples to Parler of posts that clearly encourage and incite violence… It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service. It also seems that Parler is still trying to determine its position on content moderation,” the letter reads. “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.”
Parler CEO John Matze confirmed the suspension on Saturday evening. “Sunday (tomorrow) at midnight Amazon will be shutting off all of our servers…” he said in a post on the platform. “There is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on the internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch. We prepared for events like this by never relying on amazons [sic] proprietary infrastructure and building bare metal products.”
Without a host and no access to either the App Store or Google Play, where does Parler goes from here? We will see.
Source Engadget