Parler withdrew its antitrust lawsuit against Amazon but filed another one against the technology giant, alleging defamation and breach of contract.
Nearly two months after Parler sued Amazon for cutting it off from its servers, the social media platform withdrew the first suit in a filing in federal court for the Western District of Washington late Tuesday night. Parler, a social media app favored by supporters of former President Donald Trump, came back online in mid-February using a new platform built on “sustainable, independent technology.”
The notice of voluntary dismissal did not provide an explanation as to why they were dropping the suit, but Parler reserved the right to refile on similar grounds in the future. The withdrawal filing came the day of the deadline for Parler to file an amended complaint after the company failed to meet a deadline in February but was granted a two-week extension from the court, according to the Verge.
Parler also filed a separate lawsuit alleging defamation and breach of contract on Tuesday. It did not specify a request for damages.
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Neither Parler nor the company’s attorney, David Groesbeck, immediately responded to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment.
Parler was founded in 2018 and billed itself as the platform that protects free speech. It has been popular with conservatives and jumped to the most downloaded app on the Apple App Store in November after the presidential election. But a handful of Big Tech companies, including Apple, Google, and Amazon, moved against Parler in early January over accusations that it insufficiently moderating threats of violence in the wake of the U.S. Capitol attack, taking it off their app stores and, then, offline.
Parler filed a lawsuit alleging that Amazon Web Services, the largest cloud provider worldwide, cut off the app to benefit Twitter, its main competitor. Parler, in its complaint, called the move “motivated by political animus” and requested that a judge issue an emergency injunction rejecting Amazon’s shutdown. Amazon responded to Parler’s case, saying there was “no merit” to the claims.
The newly filed lawsuit accuses Amazon of trying to “destroy an up-and-coming technology company through deceptive, defamatory, and anticompetitive, and bad faith conduct,” and it says that the decision for AWS to revoke their agreement “breached its contract to host Parler’s website and app on AWS’s cloud services, in bad faith.” It also accuses Amazon of using “strongarm tactics,” claiming that they were “unlawful and tortious.”
An Amazon Web Services spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that there “is no merit to these claims,” adding, “AWS provides technology and services to customers across the political spectrum, and we respect Parler’s right to determine for itself what content it will allow.”
“However, as shown by the evidence in Parler’s federal lawsuit, it was clear that there was significant content on Parler that encouraged and incited violence against others, which is a violation of our terms of service,” the spokesperson added. “Further, Parler was unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove this content, which coupled with an increase in this type of dangerous violent content, led to our suspension of their services.”
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The interim CEO of Parler, Mark Meckler, recently claimed that the app was taken down thanks to “a political hit and a business hit” by Big Tech companies who want to stifle free speech.
