Amazon (AMZN) was hit with a lawsuit on Monday from conservative social media application Parler over its decision to block the startup of Amazon Web Services (AWS) – and at least one AWS competitor would not make any moral judgments about host Parler’s content on their servers.
Amazon’s policy, and the policies of other tech giants that blocked Parler after millions of supporters of President Donald Trump gathered for the startup, contrast with those adopted by this competitor, Zurich-based CloudSigma, according to his CEO, Robert Jenkins.
“I don’t like the idea … of the company creating its own type of taste beliefs and deciding what is acceptable and what is not,” said Jenkins. “You end up putting yourself in that position where you’re trying to be a judge and jury on something, like a hosting provider.”
According to Parler’s lawsuit, AWS effectively closed Parler’s online platforms on Sunday, suspending its account from the only servers that carried its content. Less than 30 hours in advance, Parler said, Amazon took its microblogging platform offline, violating its service contract, interfering with contracts between Parler and its users and violating antitrust law.
“AWS ‘decision to effectively close Parler’s account is apparently motivated by political animosity,” the complaint, filed in the federal district court in Seattle, states. “It was also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market for the benefit of Twitter.”
Parler CEO John Matze told Fox News that immediately migrating data from the platform to another vendor would be “basically impossible, especially considering the growing difficulty of finding another hosting company that would do business with it after Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG, (GOOGL) withdrew Parler from their respective app stores. The tech giants severed ties with Parler because of his ties to a violent capitol siege carried out to challenge the results of the presidential election.
Despite his popularity, Matze said he had already been rejected by several companies with the ability to serve as alternative hosts.
“Technically, finding a solution is one thing; politically it’s something else, ”says Jenkins, whose company competes with AWS in the vertical infrastructure and hosting markets, in countries like the United States, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Japan, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines.
In turn, said Jenkins, CloudSigma does not judge what is “acceptable” for the platform and instead bases its services on whether or not its content violates the law within the jurisdiction in which the company operates. “We have our own personal opinions, like everyone else, but we’re not going to impose that on the user base,” he said, adding that the company depends on law enforcement to prosecute a user’s illegal behavior. “So our approach is very clear and, for me, it is the only defensible position, because basically you are counting on local cultural norms – which is acceptable by law.”
In a statement sent to Yahoo Finance, an Amazon spokesman said the lawsuit lacked merit and that AWS serves customers across the political spectrum. “However, it is clear that there is significant content in Parler that encourages and incites violence against other people,” said the spokesman, “and that Parler is unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove that content, which is a violation of our terms of service. “
Parler “does not tolerate or accept violence on our platform,” said Matze in a statement quoted by Politico. In its process, the company criticized AWS for imposing a double standard by continuing to host the Twitter platform, despite user content calling for “Hang Mike Pence.”
Jenkins said he is surprised that Parler has not built his platform across multiple cloud service providers to avoid technical or deliberate shutdowns by AWS. Given the controversial nature of the platform, another solution could be Parler to buy his own servers, according to Jenkins.
Several experts told Yahoo Finance this week that Parler’s antitrust claim is likely to fail, although Amazon faces continued antitrust scrutiny from U.S. regulators in its online market as well as in its cloud services business. The merits of Parler’s breach of contract claims will depend on the content of the agreements signed between the two companies.
“In those societies that work well in which we operate, it is not for us to decide the rules. This is being provided by the legal framework, the government and the people who vote, ”said Jenkins. “And you know, if they don’t like something, they can vote to make it illegal. Limit freedom of speech and we will apply it.
Yahoo Finance has requested comments from Parler’s legal counsel and will update this story if it receives a response.
Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter at Yahoo Finance and a former litigation attorney.
Follow Alexis Keenan on Twitter @alexiskweed.
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