https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664...
“In mid-November 2020, AWS received reports that Parler was hosting content threatening violence, in breach of the agreement. Executive 2 Decl. ¶ 4. On November 17, 2020, seeking to better understand Parler’s approach to content moderation, AWS provided Parler two representative examples, asked whether “this type of content ... violate[s] [Parler’s] policies,” and asked for “more detailed information on [Parler’s] policies and processes for handling and mitigating” such content. Id. & Ex. D. Two days later, Parler responded that it had referred one of the examples to its “regular contact for investigation.” Id. Ex. D. Over the next seven weeks, AWS reported more than 100 additional representative pieces of content advocating violence to Parler’s Chief Policy Officer, including...”
And some emails, from the Exhibits:
https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664...
As well, these are just responses, not actually discovery. I'd be interested exact timelines of things and how emails played out within Parler and within Amazon. Amazon's response is just their take on it trying to justify their own actions.
Amazon bring up some examples of posts that concern them. Parler say they will look at the post that constitute actual threats but have a policy of not removing content like the post that's just a long, content free screed of racial abuse. That alone can easily be considered violation of Amazon's conveniently broad AUP.
Amazon appear not to have chosen to terminate or threaten to at the time, presumably on the basis they were getting plenty of money and relatively little grief for hosting them, but it puts a very different perspective on the idea that Parler was caught completely by surprise, and would have cleaned up everything they could if only they'd had more time and resources.
> The first example, as hateful as it is, would not be deemed a violation of our terms of service. Following Nadine Strossen (New York Law School, ACLU), Parler does not ban "hate speech" insofar as it would be protected by the First Amendment.
By the time of the filing, Parler realized this was mistaken on both counts. As noted in the judge’s denial:
> “Parler is not asserting a violation of any First Amendment rights, which exist only against a governmental entity, and not against a private company like AWS. And indeed, Parler has not disputed that at least some of the abusive and violent posts that gave rise to the issues in this case violate AWS’s Acceptable Use Policy.”
Just to underline that first sentence, for end users on Parler, or Twitter, or AWS, “First Amendment rights” are not a thing.
Parler Users Breached Deep Inside U.S. Capitol Building, GPS Data Shows
https://gizmodo.com/parler-users-breached-deep-inside-u-s-ca...
Either way, without knowing the full picture from both sides (like a court case going through discovering to fully put out the communciations between Amazon and Parler), we don't know the answer. We see that Amazon canceled Parler with little external communication. And we see what Parler is saying. Amazon could share what they communicated with Parler (assuming they legally can), then we could see another side to this story.
It would be nice for this court case to go through discovery, then we'll know who said what and when. But until then, we have very imperfect data and have to weigh it as best we can.