Social media platform Parler, which has gone dark after being cut off by major service providers that accused the app of failing to police violent content, may never get back online, said its CEO John Matze.
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As a procession of business vendors severed ties with the two-year-old site following the storming of the US Capitol last week, Matze said in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday that he does not know when or if it will return.
"It could be never," he said. "We don't know yet."
But Matze later stated: "I am an optimist. It may take days, it may take weeks but Parler will return and when we do we will be stronger."
Matze said that Parler was talking to more than one cloud computing service but refused to disclose names, citing the likelihood of harassment for the companies involved. He said the best thing would be if Parler could get back on Amazon.com Inc.
On Monday, Parler, which claims it had over 12 million users, filed a lawsuit against Amazon's cloud computing division.
Matze said its relationship with Amazon appeared to deteriorate overnight and without much warning, an assessment that Amazon disputes in legal filings.
In another court filing Wednesday, Parler said that Amazon had not provided proof that the platform was used to incite and organize the Jan. 6 US Capitol siege. It called Amazon's termination of its services "catastrophic."
Disinformation researchers have said far-right groups that appeared at the riot maintained a vigorous online presence on alternative platforms including Parler, where they spread violent rhetoric ahead of the unrest.
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