Parler sues Amazon over removal

Parler sued Amazon’s cloud-computing business on Monday after the tech titan forced the controversial social network to go dark.

The complaint filed in Seattle federal court claims Amazon Web Services’ decision to stop hosting Parler was a scheme to protect Twitter — another Amazon client — from competition.

“AWS’s decision to effectively terminate Parler’s account is apparently motivated by political animus,” the lawsuit reads. “It is also apparently designed to reduce competition in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter.”

The suit came hours after AWS cut off Parler’s access to its servers because of its failure to police the threats of violence that proliferated on the platform ahead of last week’s siege on the Capitol by supporters of President Trump.

Trump’s backers and other right-wing activists had flocked to Parler since the November presidential election.

That growth started to accelerate after Twitter banned Trump from its site on Friday, Parler’s complaint says, noting that there was speculation that Trump himself would join Parler.

The lawsuit suggests AWS pulled the plug on Parler to save Twitter from a growing competitor weeks after the two companies signed a deal that would see AWS support the delivery of “millions of daily tweets.”

Parler contends that the decision was unfair given that violent threats also appeared on Twitter over the past week, according to the complaint.

But AWS said Parler has been “unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove this content, which is a violation of our terms of service.”