Hours after going offline on Monday, social media start-up Parler filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing Amazon of violating antitrust law and calling for a temporary restraining order to prevent the tech giant from blocking the access to cloud computing services.
Amazon told Parler over the weekend that it would shut down the service because “a steady increase in violent content” on the site showed that the company did not have a reliable process to prevent it from violating Amazon’s terms of service. Amazon said it would ensure that Parler’s data is preserved so that it can migrate to a new hosting provider.
Millions of people turned to Parler after Twitter and Facebook barred President Trump after the Capitol riot last week. Apple and Google kicked Parler out of their app stores later in the week, although users who have already downloaded the app can still use it. But the app relied on Amazon’s cloud computing technology to function.
Parler’s complaint was dated Sunday, before Amazon suspended Parler. But the suit was not brought to court until Monday.
In the lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, Parler accused Amazon of terminating, not just suspending, his account – and said he should have received 30 days’ notice. He also argued that Amazon violated antitrust law by conspiring with Twitter, a major Amazon customer, to launch Parler exactly when it was gaining broader appeal. He said he had 12 million users and “expects to add more million this week, due to his growth in the past few days”.
Parler did not provide direct evidence showing that Amazon and Twitter coordinated the response. Instead, he pointed to a December press release announcing a multi-year strategic partnership between Amazon and Twitter, and made reference to Twitter’s own challenges in policing its content.
Parler said that losing Amazon services would be a “death sentence”, although other popular platforms with the extreme right and conspiracy theorists, like Gab and 8chan, have managed to recover after being shut down by hosting providers.
David J. Groesbeck, a lawyer specializing in intellectual property in Olympia, Wash., Filed the lawsuit in favor of Parler. Amazon did not respond to an immediate request for comment.