Amazon “will end Parler’s business – just as they are about to fire,” the complaint said.
Bottom: Amazon Web Services cut service to Parler just before midnight Sunday, Pacific Time, saying the microblogging platform violated Amazon’s terms of service by not doing enough to combat death threats and other public security risks. AWS is the world’s largest cloud provider, accounting for about 32 percent of the market, according to IT analytics firm Canalys.
Google and Apple also kicked Parler’s app out of their respective app stores over the weekend, for similar reasons.
Parler has become a popular alternative to Twitter and Facebook, as these companies cracked down on content posted by President Donald Trump and others. Last year, about 10 million people downloaded Parler, according to mobile app analytics firm Sensor Tower, with about 80% of them in the United States. In contrast, Twitter had about 68.7 million users in the U.S. in October and Facebook about 220 million last year, according to analyst firm Statista.
Parler did not give an exact number of users in the complaint, but said that its use “accelerated” in 2021, with a 355% increase in US downloads on Friday. Efforts to find an alternative web hosting service have “failed,” the company said, and risk losing users the longer the service is inactive.
“If Parler is not available, people will look for alternatives, or perhaps return to Twitter or Facebook,” says the complaint. “And once these users start using another platform, they cannot return to Parler when they are online again.”