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Amazon on Saturday launched Talking its web hosting services. Speak, a social network favored by conservative politicians and extremists, was used to help plan and coordinate the January 6 coup attempt in Washington DC. It has recently been flooded with messages encouraging “patriots” to march on Washington DC with arms on January 19.
Amazon’s suspension of Parler’s account means that unless an alternate host is found, once the ban goes into effect on Sunday, Parler will be offline.
Amazon declined to comment on the suspension. Parler has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Republican lawmakers including Senator Ted Cruz and Congressman Devin Nunes as well as family members and surrogates for President Donald Trump have all established accounts on Talk and have publicly encouraged their supporters to join them. The same goes for many figures in the conservative media.
In an email obtained by BuzzFeed News, an Amazon Web Services (AWS) trust and security team told Parler policy director Amy Peikoff that calls for violence spreading to Parler violated its terms of service and that Amazon was not convinced that the plan to use the volunteer service to moderate such things will be effective.
“Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, which violates all of our terms. It’s clear Talking doesn’t have an effective process for complying with the AWS Terms of Service,” reads -on in the email. “[W]We cannot provide services to a client who is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others, ”the email read. “Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10 at 11:59 p.m. PST.”
On Saturday afternoon, Apple banned Talking from its App Store after the platform failed to introduce a moderation plan to protect public safety. Apple on Friday gave Talking 24 Hours to mitigate “planning for illegal and dangerous activities” happening on its service or deal with the eviction, BuzzFeed News first reported. Google has also suspended Talking from its Google Play app store.
Here is Amazon’s letter to Parler in full.
Dear Amy,
Thank you for speaking with us earlier today.
As we discussed over the phone yesterday and this morning, we remain concerned about repeated violations of our terms of service. Over the past few weeks, we have reported 98 examples to Speak of messages that clearly encourage and incite violence. Here are a few examples below from those we sent earlier: [See images above.]
Recently we have seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website which violates all of our terms. It is clear that Parler does not have an effective process for complying with the AWS Terms of Service. It also appears that Parler is still trying to determine its stance on content moderation. You remove some violent content when contacted by us or others, but not always urgently. Your CEO recently said publicly that he “doesn’t feel responsible for any of this, and neither should the platform. This morning, you indicated that you have a plan to more proactively moderate violent content, but that you plan to do it manually with volunteers. We believe that this nascent plan of using volunteers to quickly identify and remove dangerous content will not work given the growing number of violent messages. This is also evidenced by the fact that you still haven’t removed much of the content we sent you. Given the unfortunate events that took place in Washington, DC last week, there is a serious risk that this type of content will further incite violence.
AWS provides technology and services to customers from all political walks of life, and we continue to respect the right of Speaking to determine for itself what content it will allow on its site. However, we cannot provide services to a client who is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others. Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend the Parler account effective Sunday, January 10 at 11:59 p.m. PST. We will ensure that all of your data is preserved so that you can migrate to your own servers, and will work with you as best we can to help you with your migration.
– AWS Trust & Safety Team
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