[ad_1]
- President Donald Trump has considered setting up an account on Speak under the pseudonym “Person X,” CEO John Matze said on Wednesday.
- Matze argued in a court filing that Parler’s web host Amazon Web Services had known about this since at least October and that the possibility of Trump joining Parler was part of the reason AWS cut ties with the network Monday.
- “There is no merit in these claims,” an Amazon spokesperson told Insider.
- Visit the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
President Donald Trump has considered setting up an account on Parler, the social media app popular with his supporters, under the pseudonym “Person X,” Parler CEO John Matze said in a court filing on Wednesday.
Matze went on to claim that Amazon Web Services was aware of these plans and in fact terminated his contract with Talk this week, in part to deny Trump a new social media presence.
AWS Cutting Off Speak Monday took the app offline and Matze thinks it may never come back.
AWS said Talking “poses a very real risk to public safety,” and Google and Apple have banned the app from their app stores. Speak had become a haven for far-right activity and disinformation due to its lax stance on content moderation, and some users called for further violence during the riot on the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
Matze’s filing on Wednesday came after the social media network hit AWS with an antitrust lawsuit. The case disputed Amazon’s claims that it had repeatedly warned Talk about the platform’s contract suspension due to violent content.
In Wednesday’s filing, Matze said an AWS representative assigned to Talk had known since at least October that Trump was considering setting up an account on the platform. The representative was in frequent contact with Matze about this, he added, arguing that the person therefore should have also known that this would lead to a wave of Trump supporters towards Speaking.
“[Retracted], who is a Joe Biden supporter, was the AWS representative assigned to me by AWS and has known since at least October 11, 2020 that Trump was considering moving to Speak under the alias of ‘Person X’, ” writes Matze.
The representative contacted him “frequently” about this, Matze said, adding: “AWS knew there was a possibility that Trump would get a Talking account, likely bringing with him a surge of subscribers on the platform. Speak.”
Matze stated that “based on my interactions with AWS staff during this period, I believe AWS’s decision to terminate service at Parler was based, not on concerns expressed about Parler’s compliance with the AWS deal, but partly on a desire to deny President Trump a platform on any major social media service. “
He added, “AWS had internal and confidential knowledge of Speaking as to when and when he was going to join.”
There is “no merit” to Matze’s claims that AWS started Speaking to prevent Trump from getting an account, an Amazon spokesperson told Insider, explaining that he provides technology and services to clients from all political backgrounds.
Rather, it has acted because of the site’s content that encourages and incites violence, Amazon said.
“We have been voicing our concerns to Parler for several weeks and during that time we have seen a significant increase in this type of dangerous content, not a decrease, which led to their services being suspended on Sunday night,” he said. he added.
Read more: Oracle employees say Safra Catz and Larry Ellison are not talking about their ties to Trump internally. After the siege of the US Capitol, some want action: there is ‘blood on the hands’
Since the uprising on Capitol Hill on January 6, numerous social media outlets, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Snapchat, have locked or permanently banned Trump’s accounts, which could have made it more likely for Trump to turn to Speaking as an alternative. .
Matze said on the record that AWS expressed concerns about its deal with Speak only after Twitter announced it was banning Trump from its platform.
In the filing, Matze also claimed that Amazon did not express any concerns about Parler’s content moderation system until January 8. Amazon said on Tuesday it had issued repeated warnings since mid-November and that Speak had refused to remove more than 100 examples of violence content, including death threats.
Matze also said Parler was dropped by workplace messaging service Slack, making it difficult for Parler employees to monitor its content.
“Losing Slack makes it extremely difficult to effectively enforce our terms of service with our more than 600 volunteer and paid jury members,” he wrote.
[ad_2]
Source link