The chief executive officer of Parler warned the social media app is likely to be shut down for longer than originally anticipated, after Amazon.com Inc., Google and others withdrew their support in the wake of rioting at the U.S. Capitol last week.
CEO John Matze said the company has sought alternatives after it was notified by Amazon the e-commerce giant would terminate its cloud computing support at midnight Sunday. But it hasn’t been able to find other suppliers willing to step in because of the negative publicity stemming from the violence, organized in part on platforms such as Parler.
“We will likely be down longer than expected,” Matze wrote in a post on his network. “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. And 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.”
In the wake of last week’s riots, Twitter Inc. and Facebook Inc. banished President Donald Trump, as well as users and groups supporting the violence. That led to a surge in downloads for the less restrictive Parler service, in part because of encouragement from Republican lawmakers and media figures.
But Google and Apple Inc. banned the service from their mobile app stores, blocking Android and iPhone users from downloading it from their outlets. Matze insisted he would not cave in to “politically motivated companies and those authoritarians who hate free speech!”
In his latest post, Matze vowed he wouldn’t move to another social media site.
“Parler is my final stand on the Internet,” he wrote. “I won’t be making an account on any social. Parler is my home.”