Parler’s antitrust lawsuit against Amazon is a long shot, according to legal experts.
The insurgent social media app on Monday alleged 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.
Parler’s case, in which it accused the tech giant of treating it more harshly than Twitter in the wake of a social media-fueled riot on Capitol Hill, faced widespread criticism from many legal scholars.
Herbert Hovenkamp, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a leading expert on antitrust law, said that Parler’s suit doesn’t meet basic requirements for the violation of antitrust law.
“It does not allege the right kind of agreement between Amazon and Twitter,” he told the Washington Examiner. “It would have to allege that Twitter and Amazon agreed with one another specifically to eliminate Parler as a competitor. I don’t see that.”
Instead, the suit only alleges that, in Parler’s view, Amazon ought to have treated Parler the same way that it did Twitter, given the similar hate speech that circulated on the more popular microblogging app.
And as for the charge that Amazon’s decision was “politically motivated,” that alone works against Parler’s antitrust claims, Hovenkamp added. Since antitrust laws govern only commercial activity, he said, a political claim against the deplatforming isn’t likely to sway a judge.
“If its intent is to exclude views because they threaten violence or lead to distrust of government but not merely to eliminate a competitor, then the exclusion is probably not covered by antitrust law,” Hovenkamp said of Amazon’s decision.
Parler, in its complaint, emphasized Amazon’s alleged political motivations, charging the company stopped servicing the Parler for fear that it would attract President Trump after he was banned from Twitter this weekend.
“Given the context of Parler’s looming threat to Twitter and the fact that the Twitter ban might not long muzzle the President if he switched to Parler, potentially bringing tens of millions of followers with him, AWS moved to shut down Parler,” attorneys for Parler wrote in its complaint.
Amazon cut off Parler late Sunday night, charging the app with failing to moderate threats of violence after the attack on the Capitol. The decision came after Apple and Google also banned the app.
Parler hit back on Monday, warning that Amazon’s actions “will kill Parler’s business.”
Amazon responded to Parler’s lawsuit in a statement, saying there is “no merit to these claims.”
On the whole, Parler’s antitrust claims are “very weak,” and it’s unlikely that a judge will grant it an injunction, Lina Khan, an associate professor at the Columbia Law School, told the Washington Examiner.
