violent messages forced him to give up Talking about AWS

Amazon has defended its decision to remove Parler from its web hosting service in response to a complaint filed by the social media app earlier this week.

In a court filing Tuesday night, Amazon said it reported dozens of violent content to the social media app as of November. The company argued that Parler violated its contract with Amazon’s cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS), when it failed to remove the content and AWS suspended its account. Speak “as a last resort”.

“This case is not about suppressing speech or stifling points of view,” Amazon wrote in its response to Speak. “This is not a conspiracy to restrict trade. Instead, this case concerns Parler’s demonstrated reluctance and inability to remove AWS content that threatens public safety from servers, for example by inciting and by planning the rape, torture and murder of a designated audience, officials and individuals. “

Amazon shut down Talk, a social media app popular with Trump supporters, last week in the wake of the deadly U.S. Capitol riot. Parler filed a lawsuit against Amazon on Monday, accusing Amazon of violating its contract and breaking antitrust laws. Parler also asked the court for a temporary restraining order to force AWS to reinstate its account.

In its response to Parler’s lawsuit, Amazon argued that restoring the web service to Parler would likely harm the public, outweighing “any speculative damage Parler claims it might suffer” because its site is offline. .

He also refuted Parler’s claim that AWS violated antitrust laws by denying him service. He cited Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law favored by Silicon Valley and, increasingly, attacked by lawmakers, which prevents tech companies from being held accountable for what users post to. their platforms.

Amazon said it began reporting content in violation of its terms of service to Parler on November 17 of last year. Over the next seven weeks, Amazon said it reported more than 100 additional content advocating violence.

Amazon has included a few examples of this content in exhibits filed alongside its trial, including death threats against members of Congress, tech company executives like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, as well as the US Capitol Police, among other groups. In some Parler articles, users threatened to “burn down Amazon delivery trucks” and Apple stores, as well as “seize Amazon’s servers.”

“We must peacefully gather in front of all these tech-bullied homes and businesses, then protest peacefully and loot and burn peacefully,” according to a Parler report, according to the court file.

Amazon said content encouraging violence had escalated after violence by some Trump supporters on Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol, which left five people dead. In the aftermath of the riot, politicians and the public have called on social media companies like Google’s Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to more tightly moderate their platforms, in order to prevent incitement to violence.

Amazon held calls with Parler executives in the wake of the riots, where it raised concerns about Parler’s ineffective moderation strategies, which included using volunteers to report content. Parler CEO John Matze said on one such call that the site had a backlog of 26,000 reports of content that violated its policies and was still on the site, the filing said.

“Parler’s own failures left AWS with only the choice to suspend Parler’s account,” Amazon said in the filing.

Parler did not respond to a request for comment. Amazon had previously said the allegations in Parler’s trial were “unfounded.”