Retail and tech giant Amazon is still planning to host Twitter on its web servers, even as the social media company continues to allow violent content to remain on its users’ timelines.
Amazon was among the tech companies that took major action against Twitter competitor Parler earlier this month, claiming the microblogging site was not sufficiently policing violent content on its servers, particularly in the wake of the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Following Apple’s and Google’s bans of Parler from their respective web stores, Amazon announced that it would be booting Parler from its Amazon Web Services infrastructure, citing the company’s allegedly lax content moderation. Parler was briefly unavailable worldwide following that decision, though it has since partially rebooted, with the site’s leadership vowing to reopen fully on new servers before long.
Amazon’s decision to oust Parler due to its moderation policies indicated that the company was looking to take a strong stance against violent user-generated posts shared through its infrastructure, at a moment when the U.S. was keenly fixated on the potential effects of violent content on social media.
Yet the company is sending mixed signals as it moves to bring Twitter onto its web services platform, even as Twitter continues to allow both lesser-known and more prominent users to post violent content without apparent repercussions.