The CEO of Parler, the conservative social media app, and his family have gone into hiding because of death threats and harassment, according to a new court filing.
The documents, obtained by Fox News, show that John Matze and his family have been targeted by people who published his street address and threatened to come in his front door.
Parler, which is a favorite of Trump supporters, was booted off Apple and Google’s platforms after the Capitol riots and Amazon took it off its cloud hosting service, Amazon Web Services.
In response, Parler filed an antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. Amazon countersued, saying Parler’s suit had no valid legal basis and claiming Amazon employees had been threatened and harassed, Fox News reported.
Parler’s lawyers acknowledged some of Amazon’s claims in the court documents but said it’s not just Amazon employees under fire.
“Although AWS’s motion to seal focuses only on its own employees, Parler’s employees have been similarly harassed and threatened,” the filing read. “Parler’s CEO, John Matze, Jr., reports in his declaration in support of Parler’s TRO motion that many Parler employees are suffering harassment and hostility, fear for their safety and that of their families, and in some cases have fled their home state to escape persecution.
“Matze himself, as the CEO of the company AWS continues to vilify, has had to leave his home and go into hiding with his family after receiving death threats and invasive personal security breaches,” the filing continued.
Matze described his situation to Fox News last week.
“There is a group called UGNazi that is targeting me,” Matze said, referring to hackers who released many of his passwords and personal information online. “They published my street address, they threatened to come through my front door.”
Matze said he was concerned enough to go into hiding with his family and is not sure when he’ll return home. But he said there was a silver lining to his predicament.
“It’s probably leveled me out,” Matze said. “If I was at home right now I think my stress levels would have been like three times higher … at least there is that saving grace.”