After social media app Parler dropped its federal case against Amazon Web Services for abruptly cutting off its web-hosting services, the company filed a separate lawsuit against Amazon and its web services unit in a Washington state court, according to court documents from late Tuesday.
The Parler website and apps went dark in January as many service providers pulled back support, accusing it of failing to police violent content. Google removed the application from its Play Store and Apple from the App Store.
The new lawsuit filed by Parler, which was first reported by NPR, accused Amazon of defamation and breach of contract.
Amazon has said that Parler ignored repeated warnings to effectively moderate the growth of violent content on its website… Parler, however, said there was a lack of evidence that it had a role in inciting the pro-Trump riots in U.S. Capitol and argued that it was unfair to deprive millions of law-abiding Americans a platform for free speech.
MacDailyNews Note: Parler’s Community Guidelines state, “Our goal is to provide all community members with a welcoming, nonpartisan Public Square. While the First Amendment does not apply to private companies such as Parler, our mission is to create a social platform in the spirit of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
We prefer that removing users or user-provided content be kept to the absolute minimum. We prefer to leave decisions about what is seen and who is heard to each individual. In no case will Parler decide what will content be removed or filtered, or whose account will be removed, on the basis of the opinion expressed within the content at issue. Parler’s policies are, to use a well-known concept in First Amendment law, viewpoint-neutral.”
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