Parler, the social network favored by conservative extremists, has gone dark after Amazon, Apple, and Google banned the app from its platforms and app stores. The platform relied on Amazon Cloud Services.
John Matze, the founder and CEO, released a statement: “We will likely be down longer than expected. This is not due to software restrictions — we have our software and everyone’s data ready to go. Rather it’s that Amazon’s, Google’s and Apple’s statements to the press about dropping our access has caused most of our other vendors to drop their support for us as well. Most people with enough servers to host us have shut their doors to us. We will update everyone and update the press when we are back online.”
CNBC reports: “AWS told Parler in the email that it had flagged 98 examples to Parler of posts that ‘clearly encourage and incite violence.’ Among the posts it reported to Parler, which were viewed by CNBC, users on the platform made violent threats directed at ‘liberal leaders, liberal activists #blm leaders and supporters,’ in addition to other groups.”
And Cyber News reports that Parler was scraped before it went out: “Security researchers collected swaths of user data before the network went dark Monday morning after Amazon, Google, and Apple booted the platform. The scrape includes user profile data, user information, and which users had administration rights for specific groups within the social network. …. The data might prove valuable to law enforcement since many who participated in the riots deleted their posts and videos afterward. The data scrape includes deleted posts, meaning that Parler stored user data after users deleted it. … Reddit users claim that the scrape was made possible due Twilio, an American cloud communications platform that provided the platform with phone number verification services, cutting ties with Parler. In a press release announcing the decision, Twilio revealed which services Parler was using. This information allowed hackers to deduct that it was possible to create users and verified accounts without actual verification.”
