Judge turns down Parler’s request to reboot service

A conservative-friendly social media platform claimed Amazon Web Services breached its contract by shutting it down without fair warning. U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle on Thursday found Parler seemed unlikely to win its lawsuit and denied its request to order Amazon to put the site back up while the case goes to trial.

What caused the shutdown? Amazon Web Services hosted Parler and accused it of failing to moderate violent and incendiary comments as required by the contract. Rothstein noted in her ruling that Parler did not dispute the claim that some of the user posts violated the rules. So far, CEO John Matzke has not succeeded in fully reconstituting the platform using different web services.

Dig deeper: Read a report by Megan Basham and Steve West that details Parler’s silencing and the free speech fallout from the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot.