Parler sues Amazon

Parler, a social media competitor to Twitter, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon Web Services on Monday, hours after Amazon booted Parler from its servers. According to Parler, Amazon said it took the action because Parler couldn’t police its platform for violent content. The lawsuit notes the web giant didn’t take action against Twitter, which also uses its servers, despite “Hang Mike Pence” being a top trending tweet on Friday night.

What does the lawsuit seek? Parler is asking the U.S. district court in Seattle to issue a temporary injunction, saying Amazon’s move came as “conservative users began to flee Twitter en masse for Parler” in the wake of Twitter’s ban of President Donald Trump. Amazon’s action will kill the social media upstart’s business, the lawsuit says, “at the very time it is set to skyrocket.” The suit says Amazon is violating both the Sherman Antitrust Act and a contractual requirement that it provide a 30-day notice for termination of services. On Tuesday, Parler registered its domain with Epik—a web hosting service—but remained offline.

Dig deeper: Read Lynde Langdon’s report in the Sift on tech companies’ crackdown on Trump.

Editor's note: WORLD has updated this report since its initial posting