According to The Epoch Times, Parler, the social media company, is suing Seattle-based Amazon for alleging that the Amazon’s hosting service violated anti-trust laws and their contractual agreement.
The company, which was taken offline by Amazon’s services early Monday morning, asked a federal judge in Washington state to reject Amazon’s shutdown of its services.
Parler argued that Amazon’s move was “motivated by political animus” and designed to reduce competition to benefit Twitter. Twitter is a customer of Amazon Web Services’ division.
The emergency order asked a judge to reject Amazon’s shutdown of Parler’s account and said it is akin to “pulling the plug on a hospital patient on life support.”
Amazon “will kill Parler’s business—at the very time it is set to skyrocket,” Parler’s complaint said.
“When Twitter announced two evenings ago that it was permanently banning President Trump from its platform, conservative users began to flee Twitter en masse for Parler. The exodus was so large that the next day, yesterday, Parler became the number one free app downloaded from Apple’s App Store,” the lawsuit reads.
In recent months, Parler saw an upsurge in popularity—particularly among big-name conservatives—due to the company’s moderation policies.
