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The website for the controversial social media platform Parler was back online on Sunday. It had been down for almost a week because Amazon Web Services kicked it off and Apple and Google both banned it from their app stores.
Since then, Parler’s CEO, John Matze, has said that he is “confident” that the company will be fully running by the end of January.
Amazon, Google, and Apple cut ties with Parler because they said it didn’t do enough to moderate content and some of its right-wing users made threats of violence. Some of the Trump supporters who rioted at the US Capitol on January 6 were planning the event and spreading false information about the presidential election on the website Parler.
On Sunday, the site came back up with a message from Matze asking for help “Hello, everyone. Is this working?” A message on the site said that it will be back soon.
“Now seems like a good time to remind everyone, both people who like this platform and people who don’t, why we started it. We think privacy is the most important thing and free speech is very important, especially on social media,” it said. “We will solve any problem that comes up and hope to see you all again soon.” We won’t let the civil conversation die out!”
From a WHOIS search, we can see that Epik is now hosting Parler. Last week, Parler registered its domain with a hosting company in Washington that is known for hosting far-right extremist content. In a statement, Epik denied that the two companies had talked.
In the days after the siege on the US Capitol, Parler had a lot of problems. Several business partners have cut ties with him.
Apple and Google were the first to remove Parler’s app from their stores. They said it wouldn’t take down violent content and that was the reason. Not long after that, many of Parler’s service providers, like Twilio, Okta, and Zendesk, also removed Parler from their platforms.
In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that Parler had been taken off the App Store but could be put back if they “got their moderation together.”
In the past few months, Parler has become more well-known as mainstream social media sites have been put under more pressure to stop hate speech, false information, and calls for violence. After the deadly riot at the Capitol, both Twitter and Facebook banned President Trump, saying that more violence could happen if he was on their sites.
Parler has said that taking away its platform was done to get rid of the competition. Last week, it sued Amazon for antitrust violations to get its website back.
In a court filing, Parler disputed Amazon’s claims that it had repeatedly told Parler that the violent content on its site and the company’s slow way of getting rid of it were reasons for Amazon to suspend Parler’s AWS contract.
Parler said that Amazon actually ended the contract instead of just putting it on hold. He said that Amazon didn’t tell the social media company about possible contract violations until after the Capitol riots, and it kept trying to sell it more services as late as December.
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