In court documents filed Tuesday, Amazon says it warned Parler officials about the violent threats on its platform almost two months before the riot at the US Capitol sparked the app's removal from major app stores and technology platforms.
Parler's CEO called the move by the tech companies devastating and an assault on its users after being pulled from the app stores.
In its suit, Parler accused Amazon of violating antitrust law and said the tech giant breached a contract, among other allegations.
The move by Amazon Web Services (AWS) leaves Parler without a digital home - a blow potentially even more serious than moves by Google and Apple to suspend it from their app stores. Moreover, the letter also includes screenshots of several such examples. A Monday statement from senior vice president of communications Robert Davis, however, said the company had "had no contact or discussions with Parler in any form regarding [the] organization becoming their registrar or hosting provider".
Parler's lack of content moderation, Amazon said, had led to a "steady increase" in violent content on the network, in violation of Amazon's terms of service.
"We made our concerns known to Parler over a number of weeks and during that time we saw a significant increase in this type of risky content, not a decrease, which led to our suspension of their services Sunday evening".
Specifically, the complaint said fantastic breached its contract by not providing Parler 30 days' notice before cutting it off from its servers.
The Parler app was banned from both Apple and Google Play stores earlier in the week.
Parler is popular with President Trump's supporters and other right-wing activists.
In the wake of Wednesday's deadly insurrection on the Capitol, in which pro-Trump rioters stormed Congress and murdered a police officer in an attempt to disrupt the presidential certification process, Parler was seen as a primary organizing ground for the raid.
Matze says he won't give up on Parler and the app will return in the future with a few necessary tweaks to allow for a safe environment while advocating for free speech and respecting the privacy of users. Parler has not taken adequate measures to address the proliferation of these threats to people's safety. "Parler itself has admitted it has a backlog of 26,000 reports of content that violates its (minimal) community standards that it had not yet reviewed", the company writes.
Some of the posts on Parler called for "execution of traitors" referring to US Congressmen.
