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Parler is now offline after Amazon severed ties, and its CEO said it could be down for a week at least

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Parler, the social media app popular with supporters of President Donald Trump, is now offline after Amazon booted the platform from its web-hosting service.

Amazon announced its intention to sever ties with Parler on Sunday, saying it "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," a spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Insider.

Parler CEO John Matze told Fox News on Sunday that the platform would "get back online as quickly as possible," and that the site could be down for up to a week. In a later post on Parler reported by Newsweek Matze said it would "likely be down longer than expected."

"We have our software and everyone's data ready to go. Rather it's that Amazon's, Google's and Apple's statements to the press about dropping our access has caused most of our other vendors to drop their support for us as well. And most people with enough servers to host us have shut their doors to us," Matze wrote.

Apple and Google both removed the Parler app from their app stores last week. Apple said it was because Parler had failed to regulate "threats of violence and illegal activity" on its platform, and Google gave a similar line of reasoning.

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Apple and Google's suspensions came after the app experienced a surge in popularity on Friday, the same day Twitter permanently suspended President Donald Trump's account. The app was briefly at the top of Apple's App Store, and according to data from app analytics firm Sensor Tower it saw 210,000 downloads on Friday, up 281% from the day before. 

Numerous conservative figures and personalities including lawmakers also announced they're moving to Parler following Twitter's suspension of Trump. Gab, another social media site famous for appealing to the right-wing, said on Saturday it was gaining 100,000 users per hour.

Experts previously told Insider that Parler is likely to survive being booted off Amazon's services. "It is realistic to expect that Parler will find another provider to host their services like AWS [Amazon Web Services]," said Max Aliapoulios, a computer science Ph. D candidate at New York University.

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Isobel (she/her) was a senior tech reporter at Business Insider. She was particularly interested in Big Tech, privacy, and worker's rights. You can read some of her previous work here: The quest to find $181 million in bitcoin buried in a dump Exclusive: Amazon targeted military spouses in a pandemic recruitment drive. 2 of them say they ended up being paid 33% less than non-military coworkers. Exclusive: Amazon plans a pay cut of up to 23% for hourly workers who guide trucks in and out of its UK delivery stations Exclusive: Tesla's solar division asks employees to scour social media for complaints about both the company and Elon Musk, trying to get customers to delete their posts, former employees say A couple says their Tesla Solar panels caused relentless leaks that led to mold 10 times the healthy limit, $115,000 in damages, and a long-running legal battle Ghosted by Tesla: Customers say Tesla's ultrasleek, expensive Solar Roofs and panels come with nightmare customer service, often leaving them with unanswered calls and emails for months on end Amazon workers leading a historic push for unionization in Alabama describe midnight 'education' meetings, an unexpected mailbox, and streams of anti-union flyers as they go up against one of the world's most powerful companies 'It's a slap in the face': Amazon is handing out 'Thank you' t-shirts to warehouse workers as it cuts their hazard pay Investigation: Amazon warehouse employees speak out about the 'brutal' reality of working during the holidays, when 60-hour weeks are mandatory and ambulance calls are common The science behind Elon Musk's brain-chip company Neuralink Investigation: Instagram's new TV service recommended videos of potential child abuse