Parler, a social media alternative favored by right-wing conservatives, is currently inaccessible after Amazon booted the site off its servers in response to last week’s riots at the Capitol building.
According to BuzzFeed News, Amazon Web Services (AWS) notified Parler’s owners on Sunday that it would be cutting off the website from using its cloud servers at midnight pacific time on Monday morning. The move has made Parler completely inaccessible.
As of 8 a.m. ET Monday, visitors to the social media network received an error message saying that the site could not be reached.
Parler will remain offline until it can find another web services company to allow them to use their server space.
In recent months, right-wing conservatives have flocked to Parler after they claimed that traditional social media sites like Twitter and Facebook had gone too far in censoring users. Parler has dubbed itself the “free speech social network.”
However, Parler has also attracted conspiracy theorists and violent actors to the platform. Several reports have detailed how Parler users planned aspects of last Wednesday’s attack on the platform.
BuzzFeed also reports that Parler users have celebrated the Capitol riots in recent days, and that some were encouraging another gathering in Washington for the day before Biden’s inauguration.
In a statement, Parler CEO John Matze denounced those that used the platform to incite violence.
"I founded Parler to be a place of open dialogue and discussion where we could work to move past the anger and hostility that seems to be consuming our otherwise civil society," he said in a statement. "Parler strives to bring people together and find common ground, peace and healing. We do not condone or accept violence on our platform and we never will."
Matze added that it is against Parler's community guidelines to "incite(s) or threaten(s) violence, or other activity which breaks the law."
Amazon is just the latest company that has taken steps to de-platform the social media site. Over the weekend, both Apple and Google made the site’s mobile app unavailable to download on its platforms.
In 2019, weeks after a mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 people dead, AWS booted Gab — a social media app favored by far-right conservatives — after an investigation showed the shooter had posted anti-Semitic rants on the site.
