Amazon's suspension of Parler's account means that unless it can find another host, once the ban takes effect on Sunday Parler will go offline.
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People on Parler used the social network to stoke fear, spread hate, and coordinate the insurrection at the Capitol building on Wednesday. The app has recently been overrun with death threats, celebrations of violence, and posts encouraging “Patriots” to march on Washington, DC with weapons on January 19, the day before the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.

In an email obtained by BuzzFeed News, an AWS Trust and Safety team told Parler Chief Policy Officer Amy Peikoff that the calls for violence propagating across the social network violated its terms of service. Amazon said it was unconvinced that the service’s plan to use volunteers to moderate calls for violence and hate speech would be effective.

“Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms," the email reads. "It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service.”
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Amazon's move comes after Apple banned Parler from its App Store on Saturday afternon, after the platform failed to introduce a moderation plan to protect public safety. On Friday, Apple gave Parler 24 hours to mitigate the "planning of illegal and dangerous activities" occurring on its service or face expulsion, BuzzFeed News first reported. Google has also suspended Parler from its Google Play app store.

Parler Gets Boot (I Saw This Coming Weeks Ago)

This was added after my initial post moments ago ...

Amazon's move comes after Apple banned Parler from its App Store on Saturday afternon, after the platform failed to introduce a moderation plan to protect public safety. On Friday, Apple gave Parler 24 hours to mitigate the "planning of illegal and dangerous activities" occurring on its service or face expulsion, BuzzFeed News first reported. Google has also suspended Parler from its Google Play app store.

On Saturday, ahead of Apple's expected banning from the App Store, people rushed to download Parler's app, making it the most downloaded free app. While people will still be able to use Parler on their iPhones after the App Store ban, the social media company will not be able to distribute updates through Apple's services.

Amazon's move, however, will remove the infrastructure from which Parler operates.

Parler, which was launched in 2018, has become a safe haven for people banned by popular sites including Facebook and Twitter. The Henderson, Nevada–based company has billed itself as a free speech alternative to mainstream social networks and taken a more relaxed approach to content moderation, attracting conspiracy theorists, hate group members, and right-wing activists who have openly incited violence.

Here is Amazon’s letter to Parler in full:

Dear Amy [POC],
Thank you for speaking with us earlier today.

As we discussed on the phone yesterday and this morning, we remain troubled by the repeated violations of our terms of service. Over the past several weeks, we’ve reported 98 examples to Parler of posts that clearly encourage and incite violence. Here are a few examples below from the ones we’ve sent previously: [See images above.]

Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service. It also seems that Parler is still trying to determine its position on content moderation. You remove some violent content when contacted by us or others, but not always with urgency. Your CEO recently stated publicly that he doesn’t “feel responsible for any of this, and neither should the platform.” This morning, you shared that you have a plan to more proactively moderate violent content, but plan to do so manually with volunteers. It’s our view that this nascent plan to use volunteers to promptly identify and remove dangerous content will not work in light of the rapidly growing number of violent posts. This is further demonstrated by the fact that you still have not taken down much of the content that we’ve sent you. Given the unfortunate events that transpired this past week in Washington, D.C., there is serious risk that this type of content will further incite violence.

AWS provides technology and services to customers across the political spectrum, and we continue to respect Parler’s right to determine for itself what content it will allow on its site. However, we cannot provide services to a customer that is unable to effectively identify and remove content that encourages or incites violence against others. Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST. We will ensure that all of your data is preserved for you to migrate to your own servers, and will work with you as best as we can to help your migration.

- AWS Trust & Safety Team

70TB of Parler users’ messages, videos, and posts leaked by security researchers

Parler, a social network used to plan the storming of the U.S. Capitol last week, has been hit by a massive data scrape. 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. Twitter user @donk_enby, who first announced about the scrape, claims that over a million video URLs, some deleted and private, were taken.

“These are original, unprocessed, raw files as uploaded to Parler with all associated metadata,” claims one of the authors.

Security researchers claim that the scrapped posts are linked to accounts that posted them, and some of the video and image data have geolocation information. That is said also to include data from Parler’s “Verified Citizens,” users of the network who verified their identity by uploading photographs of government-issued IDs, such as a driver’s license.

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.

Parler, a far-right friendly site, was among the key candidates to host President Donald Trump’s social media presence as Twitter and Facebook suspended his accounts for instigating violence.

Parler, which claims to have over 10 million users, has lax rules over content, making the platform very attractive to far-right groups. Google and Apple removed Parler’s smartphone app from their app stores, claiming that the platform allowed posting that seeks to “incite ongoing violence in the U.S..” Amazon took similar measures, removing Parler from its hosting service.

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.

With this type of access, newly minted users were able to get behind the login box API used for content delivery. That allowed them to see which users had moderator rights and this in turn allowed them to reset passwords of existing users with simple “forgot password” function. Since Twilio no longer authenticated emails, hackers were able to access admin accounts with ease.

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Even though the stated purpose of the data scrape is to keep proof of wrongdoing, a question remains: do the ends justify the means?

On the one hand, some of the people whose data got scraped actively planned acts of violence. On the other, some people joined Parler only out of curiosity or professional obligation, such as journalists. However, the data scrape was universal, without hackers paying attention to the real intentions of account holders.

“From what I‘m reading, these weren‘t hacking in a sense we think about state-sponsored hacking, involving phishing or active deception, or anything like that. There was a glaring gap in the security of the platform, and @don_enby and a few others noticed it and used it,” Ali Alkhatib, data ethicist and a research fellow at the Center for Applied Data Ethics, explained to CyberNews.

Since @don_enby did not carry out the data scrape secretively, there’s little to worry about from an ethics perspective. However, Alkhatib agrees that if the data scrape was targeted towards minority groups, there’d be a lot more to worry about.

“To me, this is a little more like the Ashley Madison debacle, but for white supremacists,” he explained

https://cybernews.com/news/70tb-of-parler-users-messages-videos-and-posts-leaked-by-security-researchers/