Amazon may boast an “A-to-Z Guarantee,” but it’s allowed to make one omission under the letter “P,” a federal judge ruled on Thursday.
U.S. District Judge Barbara Rothstein, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Jimmy Carter, ruled that Amazon Web Services does not need to reinstate the social media platform Parler after it was removed following the Capitol Hill riot over claims that it was not effectively identifying and removing violent content on its platform.
“The Court rejects any suggestion that the public interest favors requiring AWS to host the incendiary speech that the record shows some of Parler’s users have engaged in,” wrote Rothstein in her opinion. “At this stage, on the showing made thus far, neither the public interest nor the balance of equities favors granting an injunction in this case.”
Amazon celebrated the decision in a statement issued to the Washington Examiner.
“We welcome the court’s careful ruling,” said an AWS spokesperson. “This was not a case about free speech. It was about a customer that consistently violated our terms of service by allowing content to be published on their website that actively encouraged violence (and without an effective plan to moderate it).”
Parler’s original complaint alleged that Amazon, which is owned by liberal billionaire Jeff Bezos, was engaging in partisan favoritism.
“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,” said Parler’s suit. “Thus, AWS is violating Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, … breaching it contract with Parler, [and] committing intentional interference with prospective economic advantage given the millions of users expected to sign up in the near future.”
Amazon defended its ban, citing the controversial Section 230 internet law protecting website publishers in arguing that Parler violated the tech giant’s terms of use.
“Under that statute, the provider of an ‘interactive computer service’ is immune for acting in good faith to restrict access to material that is excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable,” said Amazon’s attorneys. “That is precisely what AWS did here: removed access to content it considered ‘excessively violent’ and ‘harassing.'”
The judge’s ruling comes as the tech industry grapples with mounting claims of censorship from conservatives. After social media giants collectively deplatformed former President Donald Trump, the industry faced a reckoning from the political Right, with Florida’s state government moving to divest from five technology companies, an Idaho internet provider announcing plans to block users’ access to Twitter and Facebook, and Twitter’s stock values tumbling by as much as 12%.
The tech giants then reignited the charges of bias in the wake of President Biden’s inauguration, vowing to aid the new administration in ways not offered to his predecessor.
“We are prepared to leverage our operations, information technology, and communications capabilities and expertise to assist your administration’s vaccine efforts,” pledged Dave Clark, Amazon’s head of worldwide operations.
