These are the violent threats that caused Amazon to overthrow Parler

In a filing on Tuesday, Amazon responded to Parler’s claims that it acted unfairly by taking down the social network – and, in the process, gave third parties a fresh look at the content that prompted Amazon to suspend its web services account. of Parler.

Amazon Web Services suspended the service for Parler on January 9, effectively shutting down the social network. It failed to secure a replacement host and argued in court that Amazon was exercising an unfair monopoly power by taking the site down.

Amazon’s decision to suspend Parler’s service sparked an ongoing debate about AWS’s power as a hosting provider and whether such suspensions pose a threat to freedom of expression. But while many saw the suspension as an automatic response to the crowd’s attack on the United States Capitol, Amazon’s response makes it clear that the service had filed complaints with Parler long before the operation.

“AWS has reported to Parler, over many weeks, dozens of examples of content that encouraged violence,” argues the company in the process, “including calls to hang public officials, kill blacks and Jews and shoot police officers in the head,”

To clarify this point, the complaint includes 15 examples of such posts, which include graphic calls to violence against technology CEOs, school teachers and professional athletes. In some cases, the comments also refer to specific dates and targets for violence, encouraging users to form militia groups and “acquire targets”.

Amazon says it sent more than 100 such comments to Parler in the weeks leading up to the suspension.

Content warning: these threats are explicit, violent and racist; use discretion.

The lawsuit provides more information about Amazon’s previous allegations that the suspension was in response to escalating calls for violence against Parler.

“It is clear that there is significant content in Parler that encourages and incites violence against others, and that Parler cannot or does not want to promptly identify and remove that content, which is a violation of our terms of service,” said the company in a statement on 9 January. “We passed on our concerns to Parler over the course of several weeks, and during that time, we saw a significant increase in this type of dangerous content, not a decrease, which led to the suspension of his services on Sunday night.”

In the process, Amazon emphasized that it had suspended the service instead of shutting it down entirely and was open to restoring the service to Parler if the company began to moderate the content in accordance with the AWS terms of service.

Apple CEO Tim Cook made a similar statement on Wednesday in a CBS appearance, explaining that Apple had removed Parler from the iOS App Store because of its failure to moderate its content under Apple terms. “All we ask is that he abides by the Terms of Service,” said Cook. “Our hope is that they will do that and go back to the store.”