Big tech shuts Parler down, free speech, private business, Apple, Google, censorship, Trump, Bezos

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Conservative social media platform Parler could be shutdown from midnight Sunday after Amazon said it was shutting down its servers.

Jeff Bezos' Amazon said it had suspended Parler from its Amazon Web Services (AWS) unit, for violating its terms of services by failing to effectively deal with a steady increase in violent content on the social networking service.

Parler's CEO John Matze announced the news, revealing it could leave the app unavailable for a week as the company attempts to rebuild from scratch.

Earlier Saturday night, Apple said it is also suspending the app over accusations it is being used to incite violence.

The Apple suspension comes after the tech giant gave Parler 24 hours to address the 'threats to people's safety' or be removed from its app store.

The move comes one day after Google also removed Parler from its app store, also citing posts inciting violence, and demanded 'robust' content moderation from the app favored by many Trump supporters.

Parler had been flooded by conservatives and right wingers fleeing Facebook and Twitter in recent days in the wake of suspension of prominent conservative figures, including Trump himself, and the warnings from Apple.

Maetze branded the shutoffs and suspensions 'a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place'.

In a letter to the social media site on Saturday, Apple said: 'Parler has not upheld its commitment to moderate and remove harmful or dangerous content encouraging violence and illegal activity, and is not in compliance with the App Store Review Guidelines.'

Apple explained: 'We have always supported diverse points of view being represented on the App Store, but there is no place on our platform for threats of violence and illegal activity.

'Parler has not taken adequate measures to address the proliferation of these threats to people's safety,' it added.

'We have suspended Parler from the App Store until they resolve these issues'.

Matze, in a post on Parler responding to the Apple suspension, said, 'They claim it is due to violence on the platform. The community disagrees as we hit number 1 on their store today'.

'More details about our next plans coming soon as we have many options,' Matze said.

He was forced to post again shortly afterward as Amazon announced the shut off of its servers.

'Amazon will be shutting off all of out servers in an attempt to completely remove free speech off the internet,' he wrote.

'There is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on the Internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch. We prepared for events like this by never relying on Amazon's proprietary infrastructure and building bare metal products.

‘We will try our best to move to a new provider right now as we have many competing for our business, however Amazon, Google and Apple purposefully did this as a coordinated effort knowing our options would be limited and knowing this would inflict the most damage right as President Trump was banned from the tech

‘We were too successful too fast,’ he added.

‘You can expect the war on competition and free speech to continue but don’t count us out.

Parler, a two-year-old, more freewheeling alternative to Twitter that has become increasingly popular among the president's most ardent supporters, would still be available in mobile browsers.

Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff claimed on Friday night it is being targeted as a conservative platform that refuses to fact check its users.