A federal judge on Thursday declined to force Amazon to bring controversial social network Parler back onto its cloud service.
Parler had sued Amazon Web Services last week after the tech titan forced it to go dark — a decision that AWS blamed on the social network’s failure to police the threats of violence the platform ahead of this month’s pro-Trump siege on the US Capitol. In its suit, Parler accused Amazon of trying to protect Twitter from competition.
The lawsuit suggested AWS pulled the plug on Parler to save Twitter from a growing competitor weeks after the two companies signed a deal that would see AWS support the delivery of “millions of daily tweets.”
But on Thursday US district Judge Barbara Rothstein in Seattle said that Parler’s lawyers did not present a convincing argument.
“Parler has failed to do more than raise the specter of preferential treatment of Twitter by AWS,” Rothstein said. “Importantly, Parler has submitted no evidence that AWS and Twitter acted together intentionally — or even at all — in restraint of trade.”
Parler is currently on life support, with CEO John Matze saying recently that the site could be offline for “longer than expected” as it seeks a new host.