Parler Drops Amazon Federal Lawsuit Then Files Another in Washington State
Parler, the controversial social media site, dropped its January federal antitrust lawsuit against Amazon Web Services (AWS), the former host for the platform.
Simultaneously, however, the social media firm filed another lawsuit against AWS in a Washington state court, alleging Amazon violated Washington’s tort, unfair competition, defamation, and consumer protection laws.
Parler filed its initial lawsuit against AWS after the January 6 Capitol Hill deadly riot that left five people dead.
Amazon, which hosted the Parler site, closed it down, saying the “unmoderated” social media site incited violence. Twitter followed soon after, as did Facebook, Apple, Google, and other media giants.
Amazon attorney Ambika Doran referred to the signed contract between Parler and AWS that allows the company to suspend or terminate accounts if accounts don’t follow their service terms. Amazon offered the plaintiff about one hundred examples of posts that clearly violated their contract terms, including no successful moderation and posts that incited violence.
“Amazon had every right to do what it did under the contract,” said Doran. “There is no one at Parler who says they have an effective moderation plan.”
Parler claims in the new lawsuit they “did not employ what some have called “surveillance” capitalism” and that its site was a “beacon to those who sought a free and safe place to espouse political and other views that…other sites sought to censor."
The new lawsuit claims the Parler app is worth about $1 billion and that the AWS shutdown of the site led to the loss of “tens of millions of current and prospective future users ... and hundreds of millions of dollars in annual advertising revenue.”
Court papers state Parler was seeking funding in January, before their shutdown, and had about twelve million users who spent “between 22 - 28 - minutes per day, on average, for multiple sessions.”
Parler claims it lost "hundreds of millions of dollars in annual advertising revenue.”
The lawsuit also alleges Amazon, which had just signed a giant contract with Twitter, considered Parler “a huge threat” since former president Donald Trump’s approximately ninety million followers were expected to join Parler.
“AWS knew that Trump and Parler had been in negotiations,” the lawsuit stated. “If this were to materialize, this would be a huge threat to Twitter.”
The filed court papers allege AWS breached its contract when it banned the site from its media platform.
Amazon responded in a strongly-worded statement.
“AWS provides technology and services to customers across the political spectrum, and we respect Parler's right to determine for itself what content it will allow," the statement said. "However, 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."
"Further, Parler was unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove this content, which coupled with an increase in this type of dangerous, violent content, led to our suspension of their services."
The 66-page court document includes numerous allegations by Parler that AWS and Twitter promote violence on their sites.
Parler recently went live online again with a platform called SkySilk.
