Parler: eliminated from Amazon servers, stop on social media for Trump supporters
The news comes immediately after Trump's ban on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter: Amazon has removed Parler from its servers . The Twitter alternative social network is currently offline and cannot be downloaded from Google Play or the App Store.
The social network has 12 million users worldwide, and is widely used by supporters of the former US president , conservatives and the far right.
Parler: what is Trump's social network
The American service has been active since 2018, but has experienced (sad) world fame only in the last few days, following the riots on Capitol Hill. The organization of Trump's supporters in fact took place through Parler , on which the propaganda that led to the riots a few days ago took place.
The social network is very similar to Twitter being a microblogging platform. Each post (called "parleys") can contain a maximum of 1000 characters and can be "voted" or "repeated", functions similar to the Twitter like and retweet. Parler has experienced a boom in users only since the middle of last year: before May 2020, in fact, registered accounts were around 2-300 thousand.
Parler has always proclaimed itself as an alternative to the most popular social networks for its "free expression" policy. However, being unfiltered has led to the sharing of anti-Semitic, misogynistic, Islamophobic and racist content , as well as conspiracy theories and fake news. The control is almost totally on the users, since there are no censorships or fact checkers: it is the dialogue between users that decides what is shared and what is not. Parler never deals with removing or filtering content.
However, there are exceptions, which concern the use of the social network to support crimes, terrorism, illegal operations and child pornography: in these cases Parler intervenes with censorship. For the rest, it is only the public dialogue to “silence” the users and bury or reward one content rather than another. John Matze, one of the founders, said that hate messages are not censored as they "cannot be defined".
Amazon takes Parler's servers away
After the Capitol Hill events, Parler was banned from Amazon , Google and Apple servers , silencing Trump supporters. Shortly after midnight today, users were no longer able to access the platform.
Amazon made the decision after finding several posts encouraging violence during riots at the US government headquarters . Bezos' company and Google had warned Parler to delete messages and moderate content, but the social network has not taken any action and now finds itself blacked out.
Matze described the story as an attack by the competition, according to him intimidated by the rapid success of the platform. But the messages of support for the rioters, even from Trump, were considered an incitement to violence, and for this reason the social network was banned from the servers.
Apple and Google, meanwhile, have removed the app from both of their stores , considering Parler's policy of little moderation and respect. Matze is now in great difficulty, as no supplier has said they are willing to help him until large companies reappropriate the platform.
We are facing a "digital" revolution of a scale never seen before. The web, born with the idea of freedom and variety of expression, is forced to make heavy decisions. Faced with the facts that shake America, no one can close their eyes anymore.
The Parler article : deleted from Amazon servers, stop on social media of Trump supporters comes from Tech CuE .