These are the violent threats that caused Amazon Parler to drop

In a submission Tuesday, Amazon responded to Parler’s allegations that he acted unfairly to remove the social network – and in the process gave outsiders a fresh look at the content that provoked Amazon to suspend Parler’s web service account. .

Amazon Web Services suspended service to Parler on Jan. 9 and effectively shut down the social network. It could not find a replacement web host, and argued in court that Amazon was exercising unfair monopolistic power to take down the site.

Amazon’s decision to suspend Parler’s service has sparked ongoing debate over the power of AWS as a host provider and whether such suspensions imply freedom of speech. But while many saw the suspension as a response to the mob attack on the U.S. Capitol, it appears from Amazon’s response that the service filed with Parler long before the raid.

“AWS has been reporting to Parler for many weeks on dozens of examples of content that encouraged violence,” the company said in the submission, “including calls to hang public officials, kill blacks and Jews, and police officers in the to shoot head, ”

To drive this point home, the complaint contains 15 examples of such posts, which include graphic calls to violence against technical principals, school teachers and professional athletes. In some cases, the comments also refer to specific dates and targets for violence, which encourage users to form militia groups and ‘obtain targets’.

Amazon says it has submitted more than 100 such comments to Parler in the weeks leading up to the suspension.

Content warning: these threats are graphic, violent and racist; use discretion.

The submission provides more background to Amazon’s previous allegations that the suspension responds to increasing calls for violence against Parler.

“It is clear that Parler contains significant content that encourages and incites violence against others, and that Parler is unable or unwilling to immediately identify and remove this content. This is a violation of our Terms of Service,” the company said. statement on 9 January. “We have been disclosing our concerns to Parler for a number of weeks and during that time we have seen a significant increase in this type of dangerous content, not a decrease, which led to our services being suspended on Sunday night.”

In the submission, Amazon emphasized that it had suspended service rather than terminating it altogether and that it could be open to restoring the service to Parler if the company moderated content in accordance with the terms of service of AWS.

Apple CEO Tim Cook made a similar point in an appearance on CBS on Wednesday, explaining that Apple had removed Parler from the iOS App Store for failing to moderate the content according to Apple’s terms. “All we ask is that he meets the conditions of service,” Cook said. “Our hope is that they do it and go into the store again.”