- President Donald Trump considered opening a Parler account under the pseudonym “Person X,” said its CEO, John Matze, on Wednesday.
- Matze argued in a lawsuit that Parler’s host, Amazon Web Services, had been aware of this since at least October and that the possibility of Trump joining Parler was part of the reason why AWS severed ties with the network on Monday .
- “There is no merit to these claims,” an Amazon spokesman told Insider.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
President Donald Trump considered creating an account on Parler, the social media app popular with his followers, under the pseudonym “Person X,” Parler CEO John Matze said in a lawsuit on Wednesday .
Matze continued, claiming that Amazon Web Services was aware of these plans and actually terminated his contract with Parler this week, in part to deny Trump a social media presence.
Parler’s AWS cut on Monday took the app offline and Matze believes he may never return.
AWS said Parler “poses a very real public security risk,” and Google and Apple have blocked the app from their stores. Parler became a haven for far-right activities and misinformation because of his negligent stance on moderating content, and some users called for more violence during the United States Capitol riot on January 6.
Matze’s action on Wednesday came after the social media network hit AWS with an antitrust lawsuit. The lawsuit contested Amazon’s claims that it had repeatedly warned Parler about suspending the platform’s contract because of violent content.
In Wednesday’s case, Matze said that an AWS representative assigned to Parler had been aware since at least October that Trump was considering creating an account on the platform. The representative was in frequent contact with Matze about this, he added, arguing that the person should therefore also be aware that this would bring a wave of Trump supporters to Parler.
“[Retracted], who supported Joe Biden, was the AWS representative assigned to me by AWS and was aware since at least October 11, 2020, that Trump was considering moving to Parler under the pseudonym ‘Person X’, “wrote Matze.
The rep “frequently” contacted him about it, Matze said, adding, “AWS knew there was a possibility that Trump could get a Parler account, probably bringing with him a wave of followers on the Parler platform.”
Matze said that “based on my interactions with AWS personnel during this period, I believe that AWS decision to terminate service to Parler was based, not on concerns expressed about Parler’s compliance with the AWS Agreement, but on part of the desire to deny President Trump a platform on any major social media service. “
He added: “AWS had Parler’s internal and confidential knowledge of when and if he would join.”
There is no “merit” in Matze’s claims that AWS initialized Parler to prevent Trump from getting an account, an Amazon spokesman told Insider, explaining that it provides technology and services to customers across the political spectrum.
Instead, it changed due to the site’s content that encourages and incites violence, Amazon said.
“We passed our concerns on to Parler for 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,” he added.
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Since the Capitol insurrection on January 6, several media outlets, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat, have permanently blocked or banned Trump’s accounts, which may have made it more likely that Trump would turn to Parler as an alternative.
Matze said in the suit that AWS expressed concern about its deal with Parler only after Twitter announced it was preventing Trump from his platform.
In the process, Matze also stated that Amazon had not raised concerns about Parler’s content moderation system until January 8. Amazon said on Tuesday that it had issued repeated warnings since mid-November and that Parler had refused to remove more than 100 examples of content violence, including death threats.
Matze also said that Parler was released from the messaging service at Slack, which made it difficult for employees to monitor its content.
“The loss of Slack makes it extremely difficult to effectively enforce our terms of service with our nearly 600 voluntary and paid jury members,” he wrote.