Washington (AFP)

Parler, the popular social network of the conservative American right and supporters of Donald Trump, has launched new lawsuits against Amazon, accusing the tech giant of defamation, breach of contract and anti-competitive practices.

The platform launched the procedure Tuesday evening, after withdrawing its initial complaint against Amazon for cutting off access to its servers.

It was also banned in January from the download platforms of Apple and Google because of content that could incite violence and the lack of moderation, in the wake of the riots on Capitol Hill.

Parler accuses Amazon of "persecuting start-ups which it sees as threats", according to the complaint filed in a court in Washington State (northwest).

The plaintiff believes "is only the latest victim of Amazon's efforts to destroy a rising tech star through deceptive, defamatory, anti-competitive and bad faith behavior."

This accusation "is unfounded", reacted Amazon in a message sent to AFP.

As another legal proceeding against the social network showed, "it is clear that there was significant content on Talking that encouraged and incited violence against others, which is a violation of our terms of service," the group estimated.

Parler, which claimed 20 million members before it was blacklisted, took more than a month to find a way to get back online.

The decisions of Amazon, Apple and Google were taken after the January 6 riots in Washington, when supporters of Donald Trump stormed the seat of the United States Congress in an attempt to prevent the certification of victory by Joe Biden.

- "Here to stay" -

The major platforms then purged themselves of extremist accounts supporting the former president, who was himself ousted from Facebook and Twitter.

But for Parler, who claims to be a champion of freedom of expression, the reasons given are "false" and do not reflect the real motivations of Amazon and AWS, its powerful cloud branch (remote computing).

"Before all of this happened, Parler was about to raise funds and was valued at a billion dollars - and AWS knew it very well," argue lawyers for the conservative network.

"Due to the illegal actions of Amazon and AWS, Parler has lost tens of millions of current and potential users - many of them migrated to other platforms - and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annual advertising, ”they continue.

The leaders of Parler did not specify which host had agreed to sell them its services and replace Amazon to restart the social network in mid-February.

They only indicated that it now relies on "robust, viable and independent technology".

"Talking is managed by an experienced team and is here to stay," said Mark Meckler, acting general manager of the network.

At the end of January, the chairman of a parliamentary committee asked the FBI to investigate the role played by the network in the invasion of the Capitol.

In her letter, Democrat Carolyn Maloney also asked the FBI director to review the company's finances and its ties to Russia.

© 2021 AFP