The IT Nerd

Let the games begin.

Alternative social networking service Parler has sued Amazon accusing its web hosting service of breaking anti-trust laws in taking off the platform that is popular with many right-leaning social media users. You can read the court document here. But here’s the reasons why they will lose. First of all, and most important of all, Parler violated Amazon’s terms of service because unlike Facebook and Twitter, Parler doesn’t crack down on hate speech. And you combine that with the fact that people on its platform plotted the events of last Wednesday that left five dead, Amazon was well within its rights to toss them off AWS. Second, Amazon has really deep pockets and will simply throw lawyers at this to make Parler either go away, or run them out of money.

Here’s the counterpoint. If you read their court document, they make some somewhat interesting arguments. Specifically:

4. AWS’s decision to effectively terminate Parler’s account is apparently
motivated by political animus. It is also apparently designed to reduce competition
in the microblogging services market to the benefit of Twitter.

And:

5. Thus, AWS is violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act in
combination with Defendant Twitter. AWS is also breaching it contract with
Parler, which requires AWS to provide Parler with a thirty-day notice before
terminating service, rather than the less than thirty-hour notice AWS actually
provided. Finally, AWS is committing intentional interference with prospective
economic advantage given the millions of users expected to sign up in the near
future.

I would be interested to see if Parler can prove that there was a political motive behind this, and that Amazon is trying to hurt them. But remember on both parts of this, I’m a computer geek and not a lawyer.

This will be fun to watch.

This entry was posted on January 11, 2021 at 2:07 pm and is filed under Commentary with tags Amazon, Parler. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.