Amazon Employees Demand Company Stop Providing Cloud Services To Parler

Some Amazon Inc AMZN workers are demanding that the company stop providing services to conservative social media platform Parler, popular among supporters of Donald Trump.

What Happened: An employee advocacy group, Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, is asking the company to stop providing hosting services to Parler through Amazon Web Services, it said in a tweet today.

“As Amazon workers, we demand Amazon deny Parler services until it removes posts inciting violence, including at the Presidential inauguration,” the group said in the post. “We cannot be complicit in more bloodshed and violent attacks on our democracy.”

Enough is enough. Amazon hosts Parler on @awscloud.

As Amazon workers, we demand Amazon deny Parler services until it removes posts inciting violence, including at the Presidential inauguration.

We cannot be complicit in more bloodshed and violent attacks on our democracy.

— Amazon Employees For Climate Justice (@AMZNforClimate) January 9, 2021

Why It Matters: The platform has been under fire after it was revealed it didn’t moderate content related to the violent Capitol Hill protests that took place on Dec. 6, allowing its users to plan, discuss and, eventually, carry out the plans.

Parler, launched in 2018, positions itself as a “free speech platform focused on real user experience” by the head of the company, self-proclaimed libertarian John Matze.

The app has risen to the No. 1 most-downloaded spot on the App Store. On Friday, Twitter Inc TWTR banned President Trump’s page, @realDonaldTrump. Also on Friday, Alphabet Inc GOOGL GOOG removed Parler from its Google Play store. 

Apple has sent a warning email to Parler’s executives, threatening to remove the app from the App Store unless Parler provides a “moderation improvement plan” within 24 hours.

Image source: Unsplash