Parler Goes Back on the Offensive After Getting Booted Off the Internet by Big Tech
Parler, the conservative-friendly social network that was forced offline after supporters of then-President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, has filed a new lawsuit against Amazon.
Amazon Web Services, the Seattle tech giant’s internet services division, kicked Parler off the web in January over what Amazon said was Parler’s inability to moderate violent content.
Parler went back online two weeks ago, hosted by SkySilk, a Los Angeles-based outfit.
Parler’s new lawsuit, filed late Tuesday in King County Superior Court, alleges a host of contractual offenses, as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices and defamation.
Parler is seeking unspecified monetary damages from Amazon.
Its original lawsuit, filed in January in Seattle’s federal district court, was billed primarily as an antitrust action, accusing Amazon of collaborating with Twitter to sink Parler’s business.
Parler voluntarily dismissed that suit late Tuesday, an hour before a court-imposed deadline to file an amended complaint in the case.
Amazon’s decision to drop Parler temporarily wiped the social network from the web, costing it hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising revenue, the new suit contends.
Moreover, Amazon’s claims that Parler was “unwilling or unable” to remove problematic content were false, Parler said in its new suit, and defamed the website to the extent that other large providers have been unwilling to work with it.
Parler also argued in its new suit that the problematic content Amazon presented as the rationale for taking it off the web represented only a fraction of all posts and comments on Parler.
“There is no merit to these claims,” an AWS spokesperson said in a statement.
“As shown by the evidence in Parler’s federal lawsuit, it was clear that there was significant content on Parler that encouraged and incited violence against others, which is a violation of our terms of service.”
The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.
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