Parler has switched their domain registry to Epik, the pro-free speech company that hosts other New Tech sites such as Gab.
Parler was taken offline by Amazon Web Services on early Monday morning, after the Big Tech giant claimed that the microblogging platform could no longer stay on their servers due to posts on their site that allegedly called for violence at the Capitol Hill protests in DC last week.
Web domain search results have now confirmed that Parler has switched its domain registry over to being hosted by Epik, a domain registrar who hosts a number of domains from other New Tech sites, including Gab, Parler’s competititor in the free speech microblogging sphere, and Bitchute, the video-sharing, YouTube alternative site.
In a statement released on Monday, Epik Senior Vice President for Communications, Robert Davis, said that they had had no discussions or contact with Parler in regards to the organisation switching their registry over, and that Parler was “working on satisfying the requested terms placed upon them by various elements of their supply chain.”
Epik went on to defend Parler in the statement, and slammed the Big Tech companies who had acted to censor them had created an “undeniable double standard for both policing and enforcement” of their terms. In their lawsuit against Amazon, Parler noted that on the same day AWS cut off their hosting, “Hang Mike Pence” trended number 1 on Twitter, and no action was taken against them.
The statement also decried the media reporting on Parler and the Capitol Hill protests as blatant “propaganda… employed with the intent of controlling others,” and warned about the potential results of the ongoing “battle between oversized monopolies and smaller platforms”:
The notion that Big Tech has pushed for centralized control over all future narratives is very real. The danger to humanity is the looming prospect of an unthinkable abuse of both power and financial privilege that places control into the hands of a small number of individuals that routinely demonstrate they are unworthy. The old adage is that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Epik-Official-Statement-on-Parler-2021
Early reports in the media also suggested that Parler had switched their hosting servers to Epik as well. However, speaking to Fox Business, Davis confirmed that in a phone call after the published statement, neither party discussed their hosting options.
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The conversation “strictly revolved around techniques Parler could utilize to improve its oversight and content moderation practices to keep political discourse on its platform from getting out of hand,” according to the Fox article. “It wasn’t about hosting,” Davis said. “It was Parler literally wanting to find out what the best ideas were to prevent hateful content on their networks in the future.”