An American company steps up to fight Big Tech censorship



Most of the websites and online services you count on depend on cloud service providers for hosting, like the wildly popular Amazon Web Services. However, as the culture war has heated up, these services have become increasingly political. AWS effectively killed Parler on January 10, 2021, when it cut the right-leaning social network’s hosting. For a website to exist, it needs to be hosted by a provider. This reality has meant websites with wrongthink can be kicked off the internet until they can find a company to host them.

If we are to have any hope of countering this trend and returning to a truly neutral net, we need new companies to provide those basic services and challenge quasi-monopolies like Amazon. American Cloud is one such company that is taking on AWS head-on.

When AWS shut down Parler, American Cloud CEO and co-founder Aron Wagner saw an opportunity to serve organizations that incumbent cloud providers rejected for philosophical reasons, like firearm companies, alternative health services, and certain online ministries. He believed that he could provide those services for a fraction of the cost.

“We're passionate about providing reliable digital infrastructure. We're trying to make that as easy as possible and as accessible as possible for any U.S.-based business,” Wagner said.

“We need to be focused on that and making sure that it’s effectively a utility for a customer to be able to grow and scale their business, and not about virtue-signaling or answering DEI or ESG,” Wagner added.

I asked Wagner why he thinks so many companies have become increasingly political, even when it seems to threaten their core business. Wagner thinks it’s a combination of pressure from stockholders and other customers.

“After Parler got kicked out of AWS, some infrastructure providers were unwilling to service them, because they were worried about their customers backlashing against it. And so they felt handcuffed by who they were already providing service to,” Wagner said.

And how does American Cloud plan to avoid being stuck in a similar situation?

“We're just very upfront about it in the beginning. As long as it's legal commerce, we're here to support it, even if we disagree with it,” Wagner said.

A highly prepared cloud provider

But how does American Cloud keep itself and its 72,000-square-foot foot data center from being canceled by the services it relies upon?

“We own the security perimeter, we own the land, we own the building, we own all the gear inside of the building — all the power, cooling, networking, and servers,” Wagner said. Additionally, American Cloud has contracts with over a dozen Tier 1 network providers, so if one were to cut off the company, it has plenty of backup internet connections. And even if all of those cut ties, American Cloud owns dark fiber that it could use to create its own backbone.

“From an outside threat perspective, power utilities are probably a bigger threat than bandwidth providers,” Wagner said. And even in that case, the company is prepared to run the data center entirely on diesel if it comes to it.

“If the utility provider were to cut off power to the data center, I think our country would be in a much worse position than we think it is today,” Wagner said.

Wagner’s background in the United States Army helped give him that preparedness mindset. He served as a Ranger in the 82nd Airborne, where he participated in Operation Inherent Resolve, fighting ISIS in Iraq. He had planned to transition into special forces, but he was prevented from doing so for medical reasons.

“I was honestly planning on being a lifer,” Wagner said. “It was an extremely rewarding experience, but it wasn't my goal to be in what we'd call the Big Army.”

Near the end of his Army tenure, Wagner signed up for the DOD SkillBridge program, in which soldiers get to intern at a company for four months while still on active duty. He landed at a data center consultancy firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. “I really fell in love with the physical side of digital infrastructure and the internet,” Wagner said.

American Cloud for all

Wagner emphasized that American Cloud isn’t a purely ideological company. Unlike some others in this space, which compensate for mediocre pricing or a poor customer experience by targeting an underserved niche, American Cloud aims to offer better service at a better price point.

“Our target audience is really U.S.-based businesses, and it doesn't have to only be industries that have been underserved by the other cloud providers,” Wager said.

Wagner said that businesses looking to transition from AWS to American Cloud can expect to cut their bill by about 25%, and AC has saved some customers 70%-80%.

“These are non-political, non-controversial companies; they're just looking for better bang for their buck at the end of the day,” Wagner said.

I found it surprising that American Cloud doesn’t yet accept cryptocurrency payments, but Wagner assured me that it’s coming later this year.

So if your business needs cloud hosting or you’d like to explore an alternative to AWS and other tech giants, check out American Cloud and see if it’s a good fit for you.

Amazon is adding a 'fuel and inflation surcharge'



This past Wednesday, Amazon announced that for the first time in the company’s history, it will be charging sellers a “5% fuel and inflation surcharge.”

According to CNN Business, the new fee is being imposed because “inflation has worsened significantly in recent months.”

In a company-wide memo, Amazon said, “In 2022, we expected to return to normalcy as Covid-19 restrictions around the world eased, but fuel and inflation have presented further challenges.”

“It is unclear if these inflationary costs will go up or down, or how long they will persist,” the company said.

Patrick Graham, a spokesperson for the company, said that the fee surcharge applies only to fee rates paid by sellers that choose to use Amazon’s fulfillment services. These services include the storage, packing, and shipping of products.

Reportedly, sellers who do not use Amazon’s fulfillment services will not be impacted.

Amazon’s fee is the latest example of how businesses are reacting to soaring energy costs and the general increased cost of goods and services due to inflation.

Last month, Lyft — the popular ridesharing service —announced that it was adding a surcharge of 55 cents to each ride given in order to offset the surging price of gasoline.

ABC News reported that all of the money being generated through this surcharge will be given directly back to Lyft’s drivers and that it would remain in place for “at least the next 60 days.”

In mid-March, Uber announced a similar initiative to that of their competitor. Uber announced that it would tack on a 45 to 55 cent surcharge on all of its rides and add a 35 to 45 cent surcharge on all Uber Eats deliveries.

However, drivers said the surcharge reimbursements they would be receiving from their employers weren’t enough.

According to a blog from “The Rideshare Guy,” 43% of Uber and Lyft drivers said they were driving less or quitting their rideshare gigs because of the rising cost of fuel.

These rising costs, and the little relief drivers received, prompted them to organize a protest in front of Uber’s Manhattan headquarters.

The new surcharge Amazon is implementing on its sellers could trickle down and affect consumers as retailers seek to pass along the rising cost of hosting their businesses on Amazon.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics said that suppliers raised their prices by 11.2% in March as inflation raised 8.5% year-over-year.

In the company-wide memo, Amazon said, “Like many, we have experienced significant cost increases and absorbed them, wherever possible, to reduce the impact on our selling partners. When we did increase fees, we were focused on addressing permanent costs and ensuring our fees were competitive with those of other service providers.”

How The Amazon Web Hosting Crackdown Threatens Patreon, Substack, And You

If servers like Amazon Web Services will shut you down, that inherently threatens the economic independence of anyone who dares have different ideas than their speech monitors.