Parler is offline after Amazon did well on its promise to abandon the controversial social media site of its AWS web hosting services. Amazon pulled the plug at 11:59 p.m. in Pacific time, saying Parler was not moderating the content properly and that the violence demanded on the site posed a very high risk to public safety. ‘
Parler CEO John Matze announced on his website early Monday that service was likely to be suspended for a while, calling Parler his ‘last position on the internet’.
‘I wanted to send an update to everyone on Parler. We will probably be longer than expected, ‘Matze wrote early Monday. “It’s not because of software limitations – we have our software and everyone’s data ready. It is rather that the statements of Amazon, Google and Apple to the press about the loss of our access led to most of our other suppliers abandoning their support for us as well. ”
Matze, a self-described libertarian, said on Sunday that absolutely no one wants to do business with him and that big technology companies like Apple and Amazon are working together to stifle ‘freedom of speech’ by launching Parler from their platforms.
“Every seller, from text message services to email providers to our lawyers, dropped us all on the same day,” Marze moaned to Maria Bartiromo during a telephone interview on Sunday. Fox News.
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Parler shot to the top of the Apple App Store on Saturday after President Donald Trump was permanently banned from Twitter, prompting his neo-fascist followers to search for an alternative social media site. Trump delivered a speech on Jan. 6 that sparked a riot at the U.S. Capitol that left five people dead, and Twitter said it banned Trump from reducing the likelihood that the president would inspire more violence.
But in the wake of the coup attempt at the Capitol, Parler received new pressure to suppress extremist calls for violence, something Apple gave the service 24 hours to do before it was pulled Sunday.
“Well, as I said, they claim that we were somehow responsible for what you call the uprising on the sixth, which we never violently allowed … some of this stuff on our platforms,” he said. said Matze.
You know, we’ve never allowed any of these things on our platform. And we do not even have a way to coordinate an event on our platform, so they want to hold us accountable in some way. ”
To be clear, Apple Parler never blamed the violence that took place on January 6th. The company, like dozens of others, has just been shaken up by the fact that allowing pro-fascist speech on its platforms can literally inspire a coup and bring in properly elected US government leaders, such as President-elect Joe Biden.
Bartiromo had a strange touchline about Trump’s attempt to destroy Article 230 legislation, something Matze had earlier opposed. But Matze now says he thinks Section 230 should be abolished, a strange position for someone who has the task of moderating a website where he could possibly be held criminally liable without Section 230.
Matze also took on Amazon’s threats to start Parler on Sunday, complaining that he does not have enough time to find alternative hosting.
‘Amazon is the largest cloud storage vendor in the world, and we use it to house our servers, you know, hundreds of them, hundreds of servers. And they gave us … basically they said you have 24 hours to gather all your data and find new servers, ‘Matze told Bartiromo.
‘So you know, where are you going to find 300 to 500 servers in the 24-hour window, and how can you send all the data of everyone to them within 24 hours? This is an impossible achievement. You know, we’re going to do our best to get you back online as soon as possible. But, you know, it’s … there are just a few things that are almost impossible. ‘
What kind of content would people miss now with Parler offline? One video that was popular before the site went offline was made by a QAnon fan who cut old Trump audio clips together to make all subtext an explicit neo-fascist text.
“January 20th will be remembered as the day when the people became the rulers of this nation again,” Trump said in the video with beautiful graphics with things like ‘the hour has come’.
Oddly enough, this is a true thing Trump said, but it was from his infamous first inauguration on January 20, 2017. The video ended with a picture of the United States dated January 20, 2021 and the QAnon slogan WWG1WGA, which stands for Where We Go One, We Go All.
There was also content on Parler, such as this message from Milo Yiannopoulos, a far-right troll who was taken away from Twitter in 2016 for harassment.
Parler is partly owned by Fox News personality Dan Bongino, a fact that was never mentioned during Matze’s interview with Bartiromo on Sunday. Parler also took money from Rebekah Mercer, a far-right financier of Trump radicalism. Mercer is also the daughter of Robert Mercer, a co-founder of Cambridge Analytica.
While Matze’s company is clearly fighting for its life, Parler is probably also struggling due to poor management. You see, Matze is not the brightest light bulb, as they say. When Matze described how he felt on Sunday, he summed it up nicely.
“It’s not only scary, it’s extremely scary,” Matze said.
Correction: This article originally contained a typo in the QAnon slogan. The real slogan is ‘Where we go, we all go’, not ‘where we go, we all do’, a much nicer slogan if we are honest. Gizmodo regrets the mistake.