- Amazon will kick Parler off its web servers and leave the controversial social network for a new web host.
- Tech giants, including Apple, Google and Amazon, have all recently fallen behind Parler, an app that primarily appeals to conservative right-wingers with limited content moderation.
- Parler CEO John Matze said the site could be up to a week off as ‘we are rebuilding from scratch’.
- “Probably not the end of Parler,” said an insider information expert. “They just need to find another server space.”
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Parler will be kicked off Amazon’s web servers early Monday morning, forcing the controversial social networking site to go dark for at least a few days. But experts believe that this is unlikely to be the end of the platform.
Technology giants, including Amazon, Apple and Google, have taken a spate of actions against Parler since the uprising at the US Capitol by a crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump. While the actions are likely to lead to a decline in Parler’s popularity, experts said the app is not necessarily dead in the long run.
“It is realistic to expect Parler to find another provider offering their services such as AWS,” Max Aliapoulios, a doctoral candidate in computer science at New York University, focused on understanding and mitigating socio-technical problems. such as cybercrime and online extremism. Insider in an email.
Read more: Amazon removes Parler from its web hosting service
The fringe message 8kun and the social media platform Gab, for example, have both used Epik as a new host, according to Aliapoulios.
“That said, now the precedent has been set and Parler will probably always have an uphill battle to find a home to house them on the internet,” he added.
Kathleen Carley, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who studies disinformation, also agrees that this is not likely to be the end of the network, but the decision will likely drive apps like Parler to the dark web and encrypted systems.
“Probably not the end of Parler,” Carley wrote in an email to Insider. “They just need to find another server space.”
Parler became prominent by increasing the far-right audience
A protester holds a Trump flag inside the U.S. Capitol building.
Win McNamee / Getty Images
In recent months, Parler has attracted a conservative far-right conservative audience by setting itself up as a social network with minimal content moderation. The network appears to have played a key role as a meeting place for many of the insurgents who finally stormed the Capitol on January 6 in a riot that left five people dead, including a Capitol police officer.
After Twitter banned Trump’s account on Friday, some top conservative figures recently announced they would move to the Parler app and encouraged others to do the same.
The future is uncertain for the once hot social app. While it may not be dead, Parler appears to be life-supporting by no longer appearing in the Apple or Google Play app stores and is now being kicked off of AWS’s servers. Amazon has said it will launch Parler on Sunday at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time.
Apple and Google said the app did not do enough moderation. According to Insider reporters Margaux MacColl and Kevin Shalvey, users of Parler called for violence during the coup attempt in Washington.
Parler said it was being unfairly targeted.
“It was a coordinated attack by technology giants to destroy competition in the market,” Matze said in a statement. “We were successful too quickly. You can expect the fight against competition and freedom of speech to continue, but do not count us out.”
The plan to ‘rebuild’ from scratch can be a challenging task
Matze also said that Parler could be offline for up to a week because “we are rebuilding from scratch.” It is unclear what this would entail, or how dependent Parler was on AWS for cloud services and hosting. BuzzFeed News first reports Amazon’s decision to sever ties with Parler.
“Starting from AWS is virtually unheard of; if people leave on purpose, planning takes months; execution can take years,” said Corey Quinn, chief cloud economist at The Duckbill Group. posted on Twitter.
Quinn said it takes time to move all the data from web servers, and other AWS offerings are not directly compatible with other servers. “Getting what you’ve built on AWS’s systems to work elsewhere is very challenging,” he added.
Moving to a new provider usually takes months or years. Parler received about 30 hours’ notice, Quinn said.
The platform said it has about 4 million active users as of November.
In addition to the difficulty of finding a new host, Parler can also face the challenge of running a profitable business.
Read more: Anxious Pelosi staff barricaded themselves in a conference room and huddled under a table while pro-Trump rioters walked through the speaker’s office: Report
Aliapoulios noted that Parler had been planning for months to launch an influence network – “basically just a portal for advertisers and influencers to make money”, he added.
“I think they can be difficult to find enough companies advertising on a site full of violent extremists to reimburse the cost of their cloud provider account,” Aliapoulios said.
But in the long run, Parler can survive, given his current popularity. Aliapoulios noted that other controversial sites like 8kun and Gab still exist. In fact, Gab said he saw an increase in demand over the past weekend, while other social media sites stalled.