Explaining Amazon's Action About Parler

draft

Amazon removed Parler from their cloud after the riots on Jan 6, 2020, thus putting Parler offline, at least temporarily.  Well, it was a good move, but before people think that Amazon is therefore a company of character, lets review some background here.  This is a good example of why the riot changes everything. 

 

The fact is that Parler was wildly egregious about "violent content" before the riot. But also of course Amazon did nothing whatsoever to restrain their behavior and the riot was significantly promoted and planned on that social network. Amazon wanted the money and they did not want to be accused by the right wing traitors of persecuting the right, part of the mythology of right victimization, even though they are not only not victimized, they are given extraordinary and extralegal protection they do not deserve. But now that the right attack on democracy and the us government legitimacy has been made explicit, Amazon has to act or become both liable for anything else that happens but also has to face the wrath of the shareholders. In other words, this is not an act of principle, or even of a company obeying its own guidelines, it was a craven move of corporate executives to avoid criticism of their bad corporate governance.