Parler will likely return at some point, but Amazon has ensured that the social media platform that supports Donald Trump is about to, at least temporarily, erase.
Amazon informed Parler on Saturday that its loose content moderation approach was a violation of terms of service, reports Buzzfeed. As a result, Parler will be officially suspended from Amazon’s web hosting services starting Monday around midnight Pacific Time. The move will effectively take the site offline.
Parler served remarkably as one of the foundations for pro-Trump activities in Washington, DC that led to a failed riot and insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. In the days that followed, Google and Apple took the step of removing the app from the social network of their respective app stores.
Both removals from the app store resulted from the same problem: Problems with Parler’s content moderation policies. Unlike Twitter, which served as a model for the pro-Trump network, Parler takes a largely independent approach to controlling user behavior. This created a welcoming environment for Trump supporters who want to follow the president’s lead in sowing chaos and undermining U.S. democracy.
Amazon’s decision has a more direct impact on Parler than removals from the app store. There are many workarounds for Android users who want an application that is not available on the Google Play Store. And Apple, by giving Parler a 24-hour window for moderating its content to act, has inadvertently led to a situation where the app has soared to the top of the App Store’s free app charts.
The suspension of web hosting, on the other hand, effectively makes Parler inaccessible until he can settle in a new home. When the equally problematic 8chan message board lost its hosting provider in August 2019, it took several months for the site to go online again. However, it may be too much to expect the same result here.
In the case of 8chan, the host that suspended the site – Epik – was already something of a last stop, as Epik is known to have helped other sites get back online after being shut down for hateful behavior. But in that case, 8chan’s connections to the devastating 2019 mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton proved to be too much even for Epik to swallow, almost certainly because of potential legal responsibilities.
Parler is not there yet. Epik is the webhost that a network like this can turn to after conventional options, such as AWS, shut the door on continuous service. But Parler’s connection to the DC riot, which is still very recent, along with ongoing reports that it is still an active stage for plotting malevolent behavior, can keep the site offline at least until after President-elect Joe Biden takes office. on January 20th.
Given reports that additional violent actions may be taking place before the inauguration – as Twitter made clear when suspending Trump’s account on Friday – a Parler closure that will last beyond January 20 can only help stop the threat . The network’s ties to the DC riot should also give any potential break to a new host until the site can establish some appearance of careful and effective content moderation.