Hollie Adams, Getty
The Parler social media app was removed from the Google Play and Apple app stores, the company’s email services and even legal services were discontinued and, at midnight on the Pacific last night, Amazon Web Services removed Parler entirely after a period of notice, effectively shutting down the company.
According to the company’s CEO, this may take a while. Shareholder Dan Bongino do not think so, however.
Removing the platform from an entire platform became an understandably big story in the wake of the violent and deadly riot at the United States Capitol last week. On the right, the story is about silencing conservative views and censoring big technologies.
To the left, the media and law enforcement, the story is more about the organization of criminal and malicious activities, the spread of threats and the transition of online messages to the real insurrection.
If that sounds like a big disconnect, it’s probably because many of the people who argue that Parler was closed out for being conservative just didn’t look very closely at what was actually in the letter sent from Amazon Web Services to Parler, notifying them of malicious content that the service was not moderating.
Buzzfeed posted images of some of those messages. Conservative commentator Ellen Carmichael shared them on Twitter to emphasize the point.
Surprisingly, it seems that people who have the strongest opinions about Parler have not read what are the * real documented reasons * for the loss of their servers and access to the store.
– Ellen Carmichael (@ellencarmichael) January 10, 2021
Do not believe people who say they are being censored for being conservative. It bothers you to check that they are in the hot water. It is reasonable for AWS to be upset about the refusal to remove things like this. What to say about this is the conservatism of freedom of expression? https://t.co/Qmy546kQDA
– Noam Blum (@neontaster) January 11, 2021
If you haven’t seen them yet, they are worse than you think.
Reactions to news that Amazon would pull the plug have generated renewed rhetoric.
Again, for the millionth time, if Parler deletes violent posts and pledges to prevent similar posts in the future, they will be able to have their servers and access to the store back. But his executive says they will not and have no reason to do so.
– Ellen Carmichael (@ellencarmichael) January 10, 2021
Since the events of the sixth day, the topic has been huge on Twitter, and users have shared many additional screenshots of the site that illustrate the point.
For example, this random image, taken from a Tweet.
These four are from the 6th, through a left-wing Twitter account that collected a lot of information from Parler, @ParlerTakes. Again, this is from the day of the attack. It was shared with the comment “MAGA came prepared for violence”.
There are many more.
The issue of removing the platform is complicated, even with the ACLU taking a less-than-admired stance on the actions taken by Big Tech last week, including banning the president Donald Trump Twitter and many other media. Understanding what content was flagged in Parler does not rule this out. But it is necessary to know the fundamentals on which they are standing on the word. It is not simply a question of silencing the “bad conservative” media.
As for another question raised so often in the whatabout category, perhaps it was Noam Blum on Twitter, which approached the subject more succinctly.
“They don’t remove other murder calls on other platforms, so why are these?” it’s an incredible defense. https://t.co/2my2iUEKGt
– Noam Blum (@neontaster) January 11, 2021
That is just a solid and solid answer.
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