Parler is suing Amazon after its AWS suspension, leveling far-fetched antitrust allegations, including that Amazon hoped to reduce competition for Twitter

Parler has sued Amazon after the beleaguered conservative social media site was expelled from AWS, filing a fanciful complaint alleging …

TechCrunch 2021-01-12 Devin Coldewey

Context & Ripple Effects

Amazon's decision followed internal employee pressure to stop providing AWS services to Parler, making the hosting cutoff a dispute over a cloud provider's role in enforcing platform standards. Amazon's decision to end Parler's cloud service left Parler facing a period of internet unavailability.

The complaint turned that operational rupture into an attempt to compel reinstatement. Related coverage shows the legal campaign later narrowed decisively: a federal judge denied reinstatement and Parler ultimately dropped the antitrust suit.

First-order effects

Parler immediately loses its AWS hosting relationship while asking the courts to restore it; Amazon must defend its termination decision and the alleged antitrust rationale.
The suit puts Amazon's relationship with Twitter at the center of Parler's claim, even though the immediate dispute is AWS service for Parler.

Second-order effects

Amazon employees' earlier call to stop serving Parler gains practical significance: internal pressure can become part of the public and legal context around a cloud-provider termination.
The failed bid for reinstatement establishes that Parler cannot use this lawsuit to quickly recover its AWS account, increasing the importance of securing hosting outside Amazon.

Third-order effects

If cloud-service disputes continue to be litigated after provider terminations, large infrastructure vendors will face more pressure to define when customer conduct can trigger loss of service—and to document those decisions.
The episode points to cloud hosting functioning as a critical dependency for online platforms: losing a provider can become an existential operating issue before a legal challenge is resolved.

The trend: Cloud infrastructure providers are becoming consequential gatekeepers for online platforms, with service-term decisions increasingly drawing employee activism and legal challenges.

Discussion

@kyweise Karen Weise on x
A federal judge said Parler never served Amazon with its lawsuit! At 4:29pm EST she gave Parler until 5pm PST today to serve Amazon. (Amazon told the court it intends to oppose the suit.) As we noted Parler is represented by a sole practitioner IP lawyer https://www.nytimes.com/.…
@kyweise Karen Weise on x
To recap, Parler: - Sued Amazon, but filed a day late - Never served Amazon with the suit - Left its API exposed to be fully scraped - Collected users' Social Security Numbers, geolocation, phone manufacturer and carrier etc w/ @nicoleperlroth https://www.nytimes.com/...
@nicoleperlroth Nicole Perlroth on x
If you filmed yourself laying seige to the Capitol, then deleted your images and video from Parler, I have bad news for you... https://www.nytimes.com/...
@yoda Drew Olanoff on x
this is gonna get expensive very fast but i hear the mercers have some extra cash https://techcrunch.com/...
@erickfernandez Erick Fernandez on x
Imagine giving freaking Parler your SSN https://twitter.com/...
@ms_zamandlovu Zamandlovu Ndlovu on x
Any communicator who collects best in class statements for future inspiration needs to read the statement that Amazon issued when they suspended Parler. They wrote it with this very next action in mind. https://twitter.com/...
@aliasvaughn Ale on x
😂😂😂😂 😂😂😂 This is comical. They don't stand a single chance. It's done to please Trump. LOL. https://twitter.com/...
@matthewgreen02 Matthew Green on x
Virtue signalling by Parler? If Amazon have evidence Parler have breached T&Cs, I struggle to see how Parler gets past first base. Perhaps it's legal action with same likelihood of success as challenges against presidential election results. https://www.politico.com/... via @poli…
@kikkiplanet Kathleen Smith on x
When capitalism bites the “capitalism or die!” faction right in their but-tocks. https://twitter.com/...
@amaka_ekwo Amaka Ekwo on x
Some people need to make some money out of the madness. I should look for a company to sue. ARA GA AGBA NDI ARA Read👇 Parler sues Amazon, claiming it violated antitrust laws - Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/ ...
@nytimesbusiness @nytimesbusiness on x
Parler accuses Amazon of terminating, not just suspending, its account — and said it should have received 30 days' notice. It also argued that Amazon violated antitrust law by conspiring with Twitter, a major Amazon customer. https://www.nytimes.com/...
@birdrespecter Classic Bird Respecter on x
Remember how people were dunking on Parler for being built on WordPress? Well, through a plug-in exploit, literally all the user data (including photos of verified state id cards) has been retrieved by hackers and is being posted online. Lmao ♾️ https://www.reddit.com/... https:/…
@johnpaczkowski John Paczkowski on x
Meanwhile, over on Parler they're talking about blowing up AWS data centers https://twitter.com/...
@bitburner @bitburner on x
PARLER GOT FUCKING OWNED BAD...and I mean BAD 😂 “This group of Internet Warriors then used that account, to create a handful of other ADMINISTRATION accounts, and then created a script that ended up creating MILLIONS of fake administration accounts.” HOLY SHIT HAHAHA 😂🤣 https://t…
@donk_enby @donk_enby on x
RELEASE: Every Parler post made during the 06/01/2021 US Capitol riots. https://donk.sh/... (batches of 100k URLs, for archival purposes)
@kcimc Kyle McDonald on x
gps metadata of 68k videos uploaded to parler https://twitter.com/...
@donk_enby @donk_enby on x
I am now crawling URLs of all videos uploaded to Parler. Sequentially from latest to oldest. VIDXXX.txt files coming up, 50k chunks, there will be 1.1M URLs total: https://donk.sh/... This may include things from deleted/private posts.
@troyhunt Troy Hunt on x
Well this has escalated quickly: “70TB of Parler users' data leaked by security researchers” https://cybernews.com/...
@donk_enby @donk_enby on x
great job, everyone https://twitter.com/...
@donk_enby @donk_enby on x
f https://twitter.com/...
@swiftonsecurity @swiftonsecurity on x
Fuck around and find out https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@quinnypig Corey Quinn on x
So there's a lot of confusion about what Parler being kicked off of Amazon Web Services (@awscloud) means. Let me do a quick thread to explain it to folks who aren't deep in the technical weeds...
@donk_enby @donk_enby on x
metadata such as https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/...
@donk_enby @donk_enby on x
here is the metadata from all 30TB of those videos: https://gofile.io/... for how to access the video files themselves and the rest of the archive, your point of contact is now @textfiles
@hongkonghermit Hong Kong Hermit on x
Whole bunch of US nazis about to get absolutely rinsed. https://twitter.com/...
@conceptualjames James Lindsay on x
The key words in this little description are “information warfare.” https://twitter.com/...
@rmac18 @rmac18 on x
Trying to square Parler CEO's statement last night that his social network stands for privacy and the safety of users' data with a massive leak that appears to be exposing all their information.
@alexstamos Alex Stamos on x
I don't have personal knowledge of the activity of any individual, but the steps described here to bypass authentication, create administrator accounts and download large amounts of data from Parler seem like a cut-and-dry CFAA violation. https://archive.is/tYHeZ
@s8mb Sam Bowman on x
This case - accusing Amazon and Twitter of a cartel to drive Parler out of the market - is so absurd on its face, but even more absurd when you consider this piece of evidence offered by Parler! If Amazon is involved in a cartel, why are these competitors not dealing with Parler?…
@briannawu Brianna Wu on x
I told you the site had nonexistent cybersecurity. Can't wait to see which Republican elected officials helped plan the insurrection against our government. #LockThemUp https://twitter.com/...
@slpng_giants @slpng_giants on x
WILD Parler, as it turns out, was collecting data, which of course it was because the Mercers were involved. Anyway...it has all been hacked. Good luck, seditionists! https://twitter.com/...
@drericding Eric Feigl-Ding on x
Wow, a hacker has now archived 99.9% of all Parler data including riot videos and GPS locations—now more than 56 terabytes in size, @donk_enby says raw video includes GPS coordinates, which point to the locations of users when the videos were filmed. https://gizmodo.com/...
@cpicciolini Christian Picciolini on x
These folks are in for an “awakening.” A rude one, to be sure. https://twitter.com/...
@donk_enby @donk_enby on x
we are currently collectively pulling in posts at about 1.6Gbps
@donk_enby @donk_enby on x
here it is on a graph https://twitter.com/...
@robforbesdj RobAf on x
All the most racist, sexist, violent ppl on twitter flocked to this app thinking they're free to be as awful as they like. And now all their details, account info, names, IDs etc are archived and with law enforcement 😂😂😂😂 😂 https://twitter.com/...
@silvermanjacob Jacob Silverman on x
Here's a manic take for someone to pursue: AWS hosts cloud services for the CIA, which supports child-killing militias in Afghanistan, but won't let Parler-ites do free speech?
@cstross Charlie Stross on x
OMG. The money shot: when a post is deleted on Parler—as many were after January 6th!—the software just sets a “deleted” flag on its database entry. Administrative users can undelete posts at will. Such as the hackers, who therefore have all the deleted-as-incriminating stuff. ht…
@revrrlewis Bobby Lewis on x
Fox's Jeanine Pirro says the deplatforming of Parler, a haven for white supremacists, “is akin to a Kristallnacht,” an infamous night of Nazi hate crimes against Jewish people. https://twitter.com/...
@mmasnick Mike Masnick on x
First they came for the Nazis and... most people were like, yeah, fine, right, that's maybe good, actually? https://twitter.com/...
@chrismessina Chris Messina on x
TIL that if you use SMS as your 2FA and your SMS provider boots you, all your users lose their 2FA protection. 🙃 #RIPParler https://twitter.com/...
@realoganonymous @realoganonymous on x
BREAKING: DUE TO TWILIO CUTTING SERVICES WITH PARLER, THERE IS NO PHONE VERIFICATION OR 2FA ACTIVE. YOU CAN ENTER RANDOM DIGITS AND REGISTER. HAVE FUN!
@bengthojer Bengt Hjer on x
“Parler CEO says even his lawyers are abandoning him. we're having a lot of trouble because every vendor we talk to says they won't work with us. Because if Apple doesn't approve and Google doesn't approve, then they won't.” Oligopolet har gått för långt. https://www.theverge.com…
@maggiefox Maggie Fox on x
Hmmm. If only there was something to be learned from this, or... I don't know? Some sort of moral to this story? Like, don't be fucking evil and then expect people to sympathize with you? Something along those lines. You get the idea. https://twitter.com/...

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