In a growing social media showdown, Amazon.com Inc. is facing legal action after its decision to block the conservative social app Parler from using Amazon Web Services Inc.’s cloud infrastructure.

Parler Inc. today filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Seattle accusing Amazon of violating antitrust law and breaching a contractual agreement.

The legal challenge came after AWS cut off Parler’s servers on Sunday, saying it had breached its rules because of its inability to moderate content on its platform. It’s said that last week’s riot at the U.S. Capitol was partly incited by content posted on Parler. In an email obtained by Buzzfeed, Amazon told Parler it had seen a steady increase in hate speech and violent content on its platform and that it “does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service.”

Parler, in an 18-page legal complaint, listed a number of grievances it has with Amazon. It claims that its removal from AWS was politically motivated and argues that it was also designed to help Twitter by eliminating the competition in microblogging services. Twitter has taken a different stance from Parler when it comes to content moderation, and last week permanently suspended outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump’s account for inciting violence.

Parler is seeking a temporary restraining order that would force its AWS account to be reinstated. It also wants AWS to “refrain from suspending, terminating or failing to provide any services” outlined in its customer agreement. In addition, Parler is seeking monetary damages for lost revenues due to being taken offline.

The complaint also reveals that Parler is struggling to find an alternative provider to host its service.

“This death blow by AWS could not come at a worse time for Parler — a time when the company is surging with the potential of even more explosive growth in the next few days,” the lawsuit read. “It will kill Parler’s business — at the very time it is set to skyrocket.”

The suit continued: “Worse than the timing is the result – Parler has tried to find alternative companies to host it and they have fallen through. It has no other options. Without AWS, Parler is finished as it has no way to get online. And a delay of granting this TRO by even one day could also sound Parler’s death knell as President Trump and others move on to other platforms.”

The AWS suspension came after Apple Inc. and Google LLC banned Parler from their respective app stores, citing a violation of their terms and the lack of content moderation.

In an interview with Fox News Monday, Parler Chief Executive John Matze (pictured) revealed that his company has been dropped by virtually all of its business partners following the decisions by Amazon, Apple and Google.

“Every vendor from text message services to email providers to our lawyers all ditched us too on the same day,” Matze said. He added that the bans would likely put Parler out of business, and said they were an “assault on everybody” who believes in the principle of free speech.

“They all work together to make sure at the same time we would lose access to not only our apps, but they’re actually shutting all of our servers off tonight, off the internet,” Matze said. “They made an attempt to not only kill the app, but to actually destroy the entire company. And it’s not just these three companies.”

Matze said Parler was struggling to find alternative partners. “We’re going to try our best to get back online as quickly as possible,” he said. “But we’re having a lot of trouble because every vendor we talk to says they won’t work with us. Because if Apple doesn’t approve and Google doesn’t approve, they won’t.”

Amazon later responded in a statement to SiliconANGLE, saying there is no merit to Parler’s claims that its suspension was politically motivated.

“AWS provides technology and services to customers across the political spectrum, and we respect Parler’s right to determine for itself what content it will allow,” an AWS spokesperson said. “However, it is clear that there is significant content on Parler that encourages and incites violence against others, and that Parler is unable or unwilling to promptly identify and remove this content, which is a violation of our terms of service. We made our concerns known to Parler over a number of weeks and during that time we saw a significant increase in this type of dangerous content, not a decrease, which led to our suspension of their services Sunday evening.”

Parler has found some allies in groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, which questioned the power infrastructure providers have to suppress online speech.

“It’s understandable that no company would want to be associated with the repellent speech that is now rampant,” ACLU attorney Ben Wizner told the New York Times Davey Alba. But he added, “There will be times when large majorities of people want to repel speech that is genuinely important. So I think we should encourage, in a broad sense, companies like Amazon to embrace neutrality principles.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also chimed in to the debate. Though she didn’t mention Parler, she criticized Twitter’s decision to ban Trump from its platform. Steffen Seibert, Merkel’s chief spokesman, told reporters in Berlin on Monday that the chancellor believes the right to freedom of opinion is of fundamental importance.

“Given that, the chancellor considers it problematic that the president’s accounts have been permanently suspended,” Seibert said. He added Merkel believes that governments, not private companies, should be the ones to impose any limitations on free speech.

Constellation Research Inc. analyst Holger Mueller told SiliconANGLE that Parler’s suspension and lawsuit has already evolved into much broader debate over freedom of speech on the internet.

“We always see how technology gets ahead of legislation,” Mueller said. “The consequences and risk is that it is not legislators, but courts that are making the early decisions, based on outdated legislation.”

“This will be an interesting one to watch with broader repercussions,” he added. “The content moderation requirements for social networks are not clear and each network is struggling to control what people say on their platforms. This will become a major point of discussion until legislators can catch up with the realities of technology, business and everyday life.”

In related news, Twitter’s decision to ban Trump seemingly has some of its investors worried too. On Monday, Twitter’s stock closed down more than 6%, after losing more than 12% at one point in its first day of trading since taking that decision. Other social media platforms that took action against Trump saw their stock trade lower too. Facebook, which has banned Trump indefinitely, was down 4%, while Snap and Pinterest traded lower before recovering ground, Reuters reported.

Also today, Facebook has said it will remove any content posted onto its site that contains the phrase “stop the steal” in the days before President-elect Joe Biden is inaugurated. The company had already deleted a group called “Stop the Steal” from its platform back in November, and has since removed numerous related groups and pages.

“With continued attempts to organize events against the outcome of the U.S. presidential election that can lead to violence, and use of the term by those involved in Wednesday’s violence in D.C., we’re taking this additional step in the lead up to the inauguration,” Facebook said in a blog post today.

Image: Fox News