Parler, the right-wing refuge from Twitter, is offline after being dumped by Amazon, CEO says
Parler, the alternative social media network that gained new prominence when Twitter, Facebook, and other companies suspended President Trump's account, went offline early Monday after Amazon Web Services removed the site from its cloud hosting service. AWS had warned Parler on Saturday that after nearly 100 flagged posts violating its terms of service in the past few weeks, the company had to find a way to "effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others," or find a new hosting service.
Apple and Google also removed Parler from their mobile app stores over the weekend, citing the lack of content moderation. Parler was created to allow conservatives and others a "free speech" forum where they could post whatever they wanted.
Parler CEO John Matze posted a statement Sunday telling users "there is a possibility Parler will be unavailable on this internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch," but right before Amazon's deadline at midnight Monday, he said in an update that "we will likely be down longer than expected." The company has "our software and everyone's data ready to go," Matze said, but "Amazon's, Google's, and Apple's statements to the press about dropping our access has caused most of our other vendors to drop their support for us as well. And most people with enough servers to host us have shut their doors to us."
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