The conservative-friendly social network Parler was abducted from the internet over ties with the siege of the American Capitol
The conservative-friendly social network Parler was launched from the internet on Monday over ties to the siege of the US Capitol last week, but not before hackers made an archive of its posts, including any that could help organize the riot or document.
Amazon kicked Parler off its web hosting service, and the social media app immediately sued to get online again, telling a federal judge that the technology giant had violated its contract and abused its market power.
It was a rollercoaster activity for Parler, a 2-year-old magnet for the right who welcomed a surge of new users and became the number 1 free app on iPhones late last week, following Facebook, Twitter and other mainstream social media platforms have silenced President Donald Trump’s reports on comments that appear to be fueling Wednesday’s violent uprising.
The wave of Trump followers flocking to the service was short-lived. Google on Friday chased Parler’s smartphone app out of its app store because it allows postings to ‘incite ongoing violence in the US’.
Apple followed up on Saturday after Parler gave a day to address complaints, and it is used to “plan and facilitate further illegal and dangerous activities.” Amazon later joined in, informing Parler that they would have to look for a new web hosting service after Sunday.
Parler CEO John Matze dismissed the penalties as a coordinated attack by technology giants to destroy competition in the market. ‘
Parler’s lawsuit in a federal court in Seattle argues that Amazon violated antitrust laws to harm Parler and help Twitter. It also alleges that Amazon violated its contract by failing to give 30 days notice before Parler’s account is terminated. Amazon and Parler on Monday did not return requests for comment on the dispute.
Matze indicated that there was little chance of getting Parler back online shortly after “every provider, from text messages to email providers, to our lawyers dropped us off on the same day,” he told Fox New Channel. Sunday “said. Morning Futures. ”
In a Monday interview with Fox Business, he said that the company “should even go and buy our own data centers and buy our own servers.”
Trump could also launch his own platform. But that will not happen overnight, and freedom of speech experts expect growing pressure on all social media platforms to curb arson, as Americans take stock of the violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday by a Trump-incited crowd .
Meanwhile, a group of activist hackers rescued much of what happened on Parler before it went offline and said they plan to place it in a public archive. One describes the operation on Twitter as “a bunch of people getting stuck in a burning building trying to grab as many things as possible.”
The action of downloading and archiving placements, including image files that can be linked to geographic locations, has instilled some fear among Parler users, although law enforcement would probably be able to access the data anyway , and experts said the archive did not contain information it was not publicly accessible.
“If it had not been done, we would have had only fragments and bits of the information Parler had before the removal,” said Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist at McGill University who studied hacker movements. ‘This is important because people are increasingly there where people gather to organize themselves. You learn about motivations, ideological tactics. ”
Coleman said Trump loyalists are likely to find other ways to communicate, such as encrypted messaging programs or old-fashioned mailing lists, but only if they already know where like-minded groups can be found.
“Where the loss of places like Twitter or Parler hurts, it’s for recruitment,” she said.