[HN Gopher] Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
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Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support
Author : brobdingnagians
Score : 484 points
Date : 2021-01-11 09:02 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| 02020202 wrote:
| well, cloud is done for. nobody can rely on such provider any
| more. they fucked themselves so bad this time that they won't get
| any new business. maybe finally people will get back to bare
| metal and pay 1/100 of what they used to spend.
| cwhiz wrote:
| The worst thing about Parler is the bots. I browsed it a bit out
| of curiosity, a huge portion of the content is obvious bot. I
| looked into this further, and apparently Parler doesn't bother
| blocking or banning bots unless the FBI or police contact them.
|
| Parler really is just a haven for nonsense and conspiracy
| theories. My finger in the wind guess is 40-60% bots.
| ortusdux wrote:
| It fascinates me that the people most offended by the recent
| actions of google, amazon, facebook, etc are the ones pushing for
| the repeal of section 230.
| sascha_sl wrote:
| In the same way that you'd be fascinated by Trump wanting to
| "open up those libal laws" when he himself would be severely
| affected (but could probably mitigate it away with enough
| lawyers)?
|
| It's a special form of doublethink where aesthetics and actions
| can go into completely opposite directions. Many republican
| campaigns have made great use of this, particularly to appeal
| to rural america.
| valvar wrote:
| Yes, it's quite strange, but I'm guessing it's mostly due to
| media disinformation about section 230. People who are actually
| informed and in favour of free speech and opposed to megacorp
| oligopolies are strongly opposing changing section 230. Rather,
| they advocate breaking up the megacorps or making them
| utilities.
| hammock wrote:
| I've heard this before, and I'm so confused by section 230.
| Where can I read some reliable info on it?
| NikolaeVarius wrote:
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/12/section-230-good-
| actua...
| jcranmer wrote:
| Ars Technica's got a good explainer, including bits on why
| the law was enacted and what a purported legal framework
| without it might look like:
|
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2020/06/section-230-the-...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| In addition to NikolaeVarius' link, here's the law itself:
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
|
| It's a quick read, it's not long, and it's actually
| reasonably clear what it does and does not do.
| nenadst wrote:
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hell
| o...
| commandlinefan wrote:
| Maybe not repealed, but amended. Section 230 _allows_ for good-
| faith moderation, but says nothing about bad faith moderation.
| As much as I hate more legalese and overregulation, it's become
| pretty clear that these people can't be trusted to act with
| impunity, so an amendment to section 230 that prohibits
| arbitrary moderation might help. If you want to host user
| generated content, and not be held liable for it in a
| journalistic way, you can only remove content that violates
| specific, clear, well-defined guidelines.
| moate wrote:
| Hi there.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello.
| ..
|
| Your thesis is flawed. You can't define "good faith" in any
| real way. You either have to accept that sites will be
| moderated and some number of people will disagree with the
| moderation, or you have to swing HARD in the opposite
| direction and decide all sites are now publishers and
| responsible for all content on their sites including user
| created content.
| CivBase wrote:
| Or you could define an objective standard by which
| platforms should moderate their content.
| moate wrote:
| HN posting rules require me to say more than just "LOLOK"
| so we'll go with this:
|
| That standard doesn't exist and isn't objective. No, even
| that really clever one you're about to come up with. It's
| not real. It's all subjective. The entire US legal system
| is a "Common-law" legal system, meaning it's all
| subjective. Objective is for mathematics, not the law.
|
| *edited for typo
| CivBase wrote:
| The quality of laws is also subjective, yet we've somehow
| managed to come up with working governments that operate
| somewhere between tyranny and anarchy.
| neogodless wrote:
| I don't think it's possible to define a standard that
| people with wildly different perceptions of reality can
| agree is "objective."
|
| If you believe that there is a massive conspiracy that
| resulted in widespread election fraud, flipping the
| election results, and that the massive conspiracy is
| going to ruin everyone's lives in the future, you'll find
| it objectively truthful to make sure everyone posts as
| much information about the election being stolen as
| possible up to and including taking up arms and fighting
| for your freedom, and there's no way to reasonably
| interpret that content as harmful to the greater good.
|
| If you believe there was no conspiracy resulting in
| widespread election fraud, but there is a massive
| disinformation campaign stemming from a demagogue that
| now has enough followers willing to take up arms and
| attempt to overthrow the government, you will find it
| objectively truthful that posting information about the
| election being stolen will contribute to inciting those
| followers and is a grave threat to our model of
| democracy.
|
| Content is, by its nature, open to interpretation, and
| often written with persuasive language. If you're
| persuaded, your beliefs and actions will tend one way,
| and if you're not, they'll tend another way. The same
| content can only be evaluated in a subjective manner.
| Karunamon wrote:
| I'd argue that introducing legal uncertainty is part of the
| goal. When these platforms have to consider that every
| deleted post could get them sued, they will delete less.
| chr1 wrote:
| They most likely misunderstand what is being proposed, most
| people think the proposal is to limit section 230 only to
| services that do not censor user content.
| toast0 wrote:
| Whatever you didn't like about recent actions of tech
| companies, section 230 made it possible.
|
| If they should have cut people off earlier and didn't, or
| haven't gone far enough, section 230 says they have no
| liability to moderate, unless specific other liabilities apply.
|
| If they cut people off that you don't think is appropriate,
| section 230 says they have no liability from moderation that
| they've taken, other than implicit liability of violating
| constitutional rights (which would need new case law to
| establish, if it's 1st ammendment speech)
| neuland wrote:
| It's not strange if you view it through from their point of
| view. Rightly or wrongly, these people just want to see much
| less centralized moderation. And they feel unherd and oppressed
| (again regardless of whether that's actually true, that's what
| they experience and feel).
|
| They see things in a more absolutist free speech lens, meaning
| any content that is legal should be allowed. And they don't see
| platforms as being responsible for moderation. They view
| centralized moderation as inherently biased and illegitimate.
| If they can't or wont allow legal speech, then they think 230
| should be repealed and these sites should cease to exist.
|
| They are reacting to takedowns from social media sites, SaaS
| providers, IaaS providers, and financial services because they
| view these sites as an oligopoly acting in unison to bar them
| from the basic infrastructure of modern life. Imagine if
| typewriter companies ganged up to stop selling to right leaning
| newspapers and authors. Or, imagine if telegraph companies said
| they wouldn't transmit messages for Abraham Lincon.
|
| On 230, they see social media sites as a monopoly due to
| network effects. Also/alternatively they talk about a bait-and-
| switch, where the social media sites held themselves out as
| public squares when they were small. But once they were big,
| they started enforcing their views.
|
| Generally, I think people are failing to put themselves in a
| Trump supporter's shoes. Imagine you genuinely believed that
| the election was stolen. The court cases were almost all
| dismissed on standing and laches. From their perspective, no
| one will substantively address their videos, affidavits,
| statistical anomalies, etc.
|
| And when they protest, people call them violent
| insurrectionists, despite all year BLM doing very similar
| things (again from their perspective).
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I am offended by the recent actions of digital giants and I
| never called for repeal of S230.
|
| This is fairly clearly an antitrust case, which has nothing to
| do with S230. Behavior of the digital giants is very similar to
| the behavior of railroad oligopolies of the 19th century which
| actually led to antitrust legislation.
| eejit_compiler wrote:
| How is it an antitrust case? Amazon doesn't have a monopoly
| on hosting internet services. And there is no oligopoly for
| this line of business, there are many thousands of suitable
| providers worldwide.
|
| It would be different if, say, CenturyLink were blocking
| content across their transit infrastructure. That would be
| more like your railroad analogy.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Antitrust legislation isn't built around 100 % monopoly,
| but rather dominant force and cartel-like behavior,
| especially if they act to suppress growth of potential
| competitors. This is the core of antitrust jurisprudence:
| markets only work in presence of vigorous competition, but
| big incumbents are highly motivated to obtain so much
| influence that significant competition does not have a real
| chance to grow and threaten them.
|
| There is a longish recent staff report on the Web of the
| Congress regarding behavior of Amazon, Apple, Google and
| Facebook (almost 500 pages) [0]. I actually read most of
| it. These platforms have already engaged in a lot of stuff
| that is anti-competitive. And the latest purge of Parler
| is, among other effects, also a suppression of a potential
| competitor.
|
| Of course, the tech giants say that they weren't officially
| motivated by a desire to suppress a competitor, but they
| acted against potentially competing firms so many times
| already that one should be wary about their explanations.
|
| [0] https://judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/competition_i
| n_dig...
| eejit_compiler wrote:
| Thanks for clarifying your position, but I still don't
| quite see how this applies to Parler in terms of their
| decision to host upon AWS. There are many thousands of
| other hosting companies worldwide, they didn't have to
| use one of the big three IaaS providers.
|
| It seems more like poor planning on their part: over-
| reliance on specific services of a single provider, and
| no disaster recovery plan for if this is made
| unavailable. Particularly considering the business
| they're in - publishing controversial content that gets
| its users banned on more mainstream social media sites.
| They would have been wise to have a backup plan for
| hosting.
|
| On the other hand, if you were also passing reference to
| the app store duopoly (as the report mentions this), I
| agree with you on that. At least on Android a banned app
| can be fairly easily side-loaded; iOS users are entirely
| subject to Apple's whims on what their device is
| permitted to run.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I could definitely have formulated my opinion better...
|
| If Amazon acted alone, I do not think that there would be
| an antitrust case. But given that Amazon acted together
| with the app store duopoly, in what appears to be a
| coordinated action with the same goal, I think the
| antitrust case applies. If two very dominant players make
| a pact with a third not-so-dominant player to squeeze
| somebody a bit more, it only makes their anti-competitive
| behavior harsher.
|
| BTW, I believe that Parler really could have prepared
| better. It is obvious that they did not have a good plan
| B.
| tylerhou wrote:
| Why do you assume that there was necessarily
| coordination? In my opinion it's likely everyone who is
| dropping Parler came to their verdict independently.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is certainly possible that they all acted
| independently, but given how many cases of anti-
| competitive behavior on their part have been documented
| in the linked report of the Congress - these companies
| are not completely honest.
|
| Mikhail Gorbachev used to say "Trust, but verify." I
| would like to see some verification in this case.
| khawkins wrote:
| Section 230(b):
|
| It is the policy of the United States- (1) to promote the
| continued development of the Internet and other interactive
| computer services and other interactive media; (2) to preserve
| the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists
| for the Internet and other interactive computer services,
| unfettered by Federal or State regulation; (3) to encourage the
| development of technologies which maximize user control over
| what information is received by individuals, families, and
| schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer
| services; ...
|
| Up until now, a Laissez-faire regulatory approach seemed to
| achieve these goals, but it's hardly fair to call what exists
| at this point a "vibrant and competitive free market" which
| "maximizes user control over what information is receives by
| individuals". Especially if a cartel of tech platforms can
| completely stamp out individuals' ability to listen to the
| speech of people they want access to. Regulation is needed now.
| _nickwhite wrote:
| Something interesting here is that not only the Parler app was
| pulled... the _entire_ parlor.com domain and website registration
| is non-existent at the moment. It's like a black hole:
|
| >dig @1.1.1.1 parler.com +short <empty>
| 6sup6 wrote:
| Can you offer some hypothesis that explain what happened?
| _nickwhite wrote:
| Dreamhost is/was their domain name registrar- and even though
| Dreamhost didn't host Parler's services, they were taking
| massive heat on Twitter over it.
|
| So I guess at some point, Dreamhost as a registrar silently
| deleted them. Now, even if Parler wanted to move somewhere,
| they would have to regain control of their domain from
| Dreamhost.
| shrimpx wrote:
| They were likely running everything on aws including dns.
| _nickwhite wrote:
| They were running all of their websites through AWS, but
| didn't use AWS as the registrar.
| [deleted]
| satysin wrote:
| This needs to happen. Parler is not a "social network" in the
| same way Twitter, Facebook or Reddit are. It is a radicalisation
| platform hiding behind a Silicon Valley style startup veneer. I
| signed up for Parler 6 weeks ago and what I have seen from the
| platform is frightening. It isn't dumb memes and gifs but
| hardcore alt-right propaganda and conspiracy theories.
|
| Within hours of commenting on posts I was contacted about joining
| groups of "like minded patriots" (their actual words). This lead
| to Telegram and Discord servers dedicated to "their cause". These
| places are highly organised. Unique URLs with multiple 'decoy and
| delay' steps to find and remove people from sharing links with
| authorities for example.
|
| They have detailed (probably some of the best tbh) guides on
| signing up for secure services like Protonmail for email,
| installing Tor and Tails to access Onion services (this leads to
| a whole other world of horrors), how to use Bitcoin to purchase
| what are essentially burner SIM cards and phones to sign up to
| other services, and advice on how to recruit your friends and
| family such as conversation topics and "gotcha" responses,
| manipulated media to share, psychological and emotional
| manipulation techniques, etc.
|
| The techniques used are no different to what we have seen from
| groups like ISIS/ISIL over the past decade.
|
| I support free speech but this goes beyond that IMHO. This isn't
| strongly disagreeing with government policies but clearly talking
| about murdering those they believe are wrong. I have seen people
| seriously talking about kidnapping and murdering politicians.
| Posting photos of their weapons. Sharing detailed instructions on
| homemade chemical weapons and IEDs from people who clearly have
| military knowledge of such things.
|
| When ISIS was releasing daily videos of horrific murders everyone
| called for such recruitment platforms to be shut down. It wasn't
| a matter of free speech then and it isn't now. The only
| difference is that these are (mostly) white American and European
| people not brown people from the middle east. The message and
| methodologies used are the same though.
|
| Parler is without question a platform for radicalisation and
| recruitment for "western jihad" as I have seen people un-
| ironically use. It needs to go and I fully support Amazon, Apple,
| Google and whoever else in shutting them down.
|
| Note: I posted this yesterday in the mega thread so my apologies
| for repeating myself but I feel quite strongly about this and the
| mega thread was indeed mega so my post was most likely lost in
| the huge number of comments.
| swebs wrote:
| >Parler is not a "social network" in the same way Twitter,
| Facebook or Reddit are. It is a radicalisation platform hiding
| behind a Silicon Valley style startup veneer.
|
| Actually, that's exactly how I'd describe modern reddit, and I
| guess Twitter too.
| Cabal wrote:
| I've been a Parler user for multiple months and have never seen
| any of the activity like the above poster is claiming. While I
| occasionally read the far-right stuff for fun (and the far-left
| stuff on Twitter), my interests are mostly in tech. Never once
| has someone tried to "recruit" me for any of the above.
|
| I can only assume this nonsense is trolling/preaching to the
| choir, etc.
| bittercynic wrote:
| Do you take any precautions to avoid becoming interesting to
| intelligence agencies when doing this kind of research?
| cs-szazz wrote:
| Serious question, it seems AWS is by no means a monopoly on web
| hosting (Google, Azure, Digital Ocean, Linode, the list goes on).
| It seems to be they're well within their rights as a company to
| not host Parler, and Parler can try to go somewhere else. If no
| other companies want to host Parler, isn't that more a reflection
| of Parler than the hosting companies? It doesn't seem like they
| should be obligated to host, since that's as slippery a slope as
| not hosting is. Perhaps this is a decision where not everyone
| will ever be happy, and that's just how it's going to be?
| 6sup6 wrote:
| I would put my money that if Parler goes to any of the web
| hosting services you listed, they will still be deplatformed.
| cs-szazz wrote:
| Yeah definitely, but Amazon can always say "Go host on GCP".
| Then Google Cloud can say "Go host on Azure". Then Microsoft
| says "Go host on Digital Ocean", and repeat until you run out
| of hosts.
|
| Is it like a game of hot potato where the last hosting
| company has to host them? Because it seems there are
| alternatives to each individually, and it's only when they
| all say no that there are issues for Parler. And to me that
| feels like a Parler problem, not an AWS problem.
| readams wrote:
| You can ask the question of whether you think in general that
| marginalized voices should be allowed to exist. Obviously, you
| don't like these particular people (and neither do I) so you
| don't see any problem with eradicating their voice. If Amazon
| were just one provider and there were other options it might
| even then still be OK. But it's not just a choice of Amazon.
| Any provider hosting them will be subject to the cancel mob.
|
| Picture instead private businesses who all refuse to do
| business with Jews. Anyone who does business with them are
| subject to reprisal and boycott by their vendors, friends, and
| neighbors. The Jews themselves of course are fired from their
| jobs if anyone finds out they're a Jew. In practice the Jews
| cannot do business and must live a marginalized existence or
| hide who they are. So it's not enough to say "well it's a
| private business they can do what they want" when you would not
| consider this valid in other contexts.
|
| And of course all this is ignoring the question of whether any
| of this is likely to be successful in the end or if it will
| further justify reprisals and enrage anyone subject to this mob
| justice. Certainly all the tech companies banding together to
| silence politics they don't like plays exactly into the
| narrative the far right is pushing.
| cs-szazz wrote:
| Yeah it's certainly a slippery slope, 100% agree.
|
| In your example it's probably slightly different because
| religion is a protected class, while political leanings
| aren't.
|
| I think what's particularly interesting is you substitute
| "right wing" with "Jews" like you did, and you start to
| wonder if Amazon crossed the line. But then change "Jew" to
| "terrorist", and you think Amazon might be in the right.
| Clearly we can't protect ALL groups, that'd be silly.
| kats wrote:
| Just pointing out that Parler was the #1 most downloaded
| app on the Android app store for some amount of time.
| (Around the #1 or #2 spot for a couple months? At least a
| few weeks.)
| tylerhou wrote:
| > Picture instead private businesses who all refuse to do
| business with Jews.
|
| This is a false equivalency.
|
| Race, religion, etc. are protected classes. It's impossible
| for people to change their race, and our society has agreed
| that we shouldn't force people to change their religion.
|
| Political beliefs are not protected classes. When your
| political beliefs include inciting violence by spreading
| unfounded conspiracy theories, then private companies have a
| right to kick you off.
|
| > Certainly all the tech companies banding together to
| silence politics they don't like plays exactly into the
| narrative the far right is pushing.
|
| In my opinion, the far right is already too far gone -- they
| are already conspiracy theorists. Any contradictory
| information will be used as evidence to show that the
| conspiracy is much wider and bigger than one could have
| imagined -- adding to the weight of the theory. There is no
| reasoning with them unless someone they truly believe (read:
| Trump) dismisses the theory convincingly.
| readams wrote:
| Protected classes were defined in the law only because we
| decided they should be. Nothing says it can't include more
| or fewer things as the winds of opinion blow in a different
| direction. A religion isn't really much different from
| other belief systems after all.
|
| This is a common error in reasoning by the way: looking to
| the way current law happens to be and inferring from that
| what the right thing to do is. For example, it is not
| against the first amendment for Amazon to ban Republicans.
| This does not mean it would be a good thing for Amazon to
| ban Republicans. Similarly I'm sure, if you tried, you
| could come up with all kinds of unjust laws that punish
| things that should not be punished (I certainly can think
| of many).
| hire_charts wrote:
| Amazon is not banning Republicans. Amazon is dropping a
| risky client after having more than reasonable doubts
| about that client's ability to operate in good faith.
| Republican views are not being censored. The fact that
| this site happens to cater to a lot of "Republicans" who
| feel marginalized by public discourse is merely a very
| telling correlation between a political view and a
| tendency towards violent tendencies and conspiratorial
| beliefs.
| kingdomcome50 wrote:
| A religion is similar to politics only in that they are
| both beliefs. Your argument is essentially that _any_
| belief could /should be protected. I don't think you mean
| that, so I urge _you_ to try to come up with a more
| coherent formulation.
|
| I would start by exploring the differences between what
| it means to hold a religious belief vs a political one.
| Maybe start by comparing how each of the above has
| changed, or the associations thereof with their
| respective ideals over, say, the last 1000 years. Maybe
| then proceed to identify from where a religious belief
| manifests vs a political belief. Finally, you could look
| towards the kinds of answers of which each respective
| belief offers explanatory power (i.e. What kinds of
| questions does religion answer vs politics?). We could
| probably even take this a step further and look at the
| history of each as well no? Political leanings have
| existed _at least_ as long as religious beliefs. At one
| time these were likely the same! So what is it about the
| history of politics and religion that has lead us to the
| the kinds of separation we have reached today?
|
| I have confidence you can come up with many kinds of
| differences. Good luck!
| tylerhou wrote:
| > This is a common error in reasoning by the way: looking
| to the way current law happens to be and inferring from
| that what the right thing to do is.
|
| I understand this, and the understanding is implicit in
| the way I phrased: "our society has agreed that we
| shouldn't force people to change their religion." It's
| also worth noting that "religion" here usually refers to
| practices and beliefs that don't infringe on other
| people's rights. To evaluate whether these practices
| infringe on someone's rights, one should take into
| account their protected classes: i.e. you're not allowed
| to discriminate against a person's skin color even if
| your religion says that you should.
|
| Our society has also agreed that certain beliefs are
| reprehensible and deserve no place in society: both major
| political sides think that advocating for violence is
| unacceptable, and therefore both the Democrats and the
| (centrist) Republicans cannot claim that private
| companies who refuse to host a platform that allows calls
| for violence are unjustly discriminating -- if the
| politicians want to be logically consistent. (This is
| what I meant by "When your political beliefs include
| inciting violence by spreading unfounded conspiracy
| theories, then private companies have a right to kick you
| off.") This is a positive statement, not a normative
| statement.
|
| Normatively, alt-right beliefs should not be given the
| same protections as religions because they infringe on
| other people's rights. For example, repeated, false
| allegations of voter fraud indirectly infringe on
| people's right to vote because they effect court cases
| that call for legitimate voters to be disenfranchised.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > If no other companies want to host Parler, isn't that more a
| reflection of Parler than the hosting companies?
|
| Yes. The funny thing is that it happened to people who foam at
| the mouth about the rights of private businesses to do what
| they want and decry government intervention.
| khawkins wrote:
| You're conflating different groups of people because you
| don't understand the nuances of the different groups at play.
| These are not the same groups in the slightest.
| dagmx wrote:
| How are they not when they support the same group of
| politicians?
| khawkins wrote:
| Since when do people only vote for people they completely
| agree with and not the "better of two evils"? If the
| choices are the party that actively wants to censor you
| and the party that doesn't want to pass legislation to
| protect you from censorship, the choice is obvious.
| dagmx wrote:
| You're the one claiming they're not the same group in the
| slightest. How do you quantify that?
|
| Surely if they're voting for the same people, some of
| them must share the same beliefs. Unless you're saying
| all Parler users are completely distinct from all non-
| Parler conservatives?
| khawkins wrote:
| You're the one who said these people are the same group,
| the onus is on you to provide evidence of your claim. But
| it should be self-evident that tech giants maintain a
| near oligopoly of social media discourse and people
| aren't going to "foam at the mouth" to support their own
| ideological destruction.
| dagmx wrote:
| Where did I say that? You made the claim, I questioned
| it.
| DickingAround wrote:
| Agreed. This kind of situation is perfect for separating the
| true freedom loving (i.e. "you do what you want with what you
| own") from the conservatives (i.e. "you do what we want you
| to do"). Those who like freedom says "that's fine, it's their
| call" or even "I won't do business with them anymore because
| I disagree with this call", but the conservatives say that
| "it's wrong and the gov should intervene".
| whatsmyusername wrote:
| Maybe this
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBxXcAAuTkC?format=jpg&name=...
|
| Had something
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBuXYAAB4y2?format=jpg&name=...
|
| To do with it
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgB3XIAcffGC?format=jpg&name=...
|
| The bar for "enough moderation to show due care" isn't that high,
| and they intentionally limboed right under it.
|
| Oh no, the consequences of my own actions...
| karmasimida wrote:
| So is it legal to boot out a store from a plaza, selling
| offensive items?
|
| I think Amazon is in a very difficult position, do or don't, it
| is doomed. But I guess it will have to make a call on this one,
| to avoid looking like standing on the wrong side by the coming
| administration.
| gnicholas wrote:
| It would absolutely be legal for a mall to terminate the lease
| of a tenant, per its terms, if this happened.
| nautilus12 wrote:
| Here is what I dont understand, is Parler violating Amazon's TOS
| or its users? Suppose that some of the users are bots, doesn't
| that mean that in order to fulfill amazon's TOS Parler would have
| to actively build something (moderation systems) to keep up with
| the bots? Doesn't this make any service that can't do this
| collateral damage? What if people built bot systems good enough
| to sidestep twitter (speaking in code for example, using a
| cypher) and levelled them at twitter, etc. would the same thing
| happen?
| gurjeet wrote:
| This being HN I expected more commentary around how a company
| can/should build technology to survive such incidents, and not go
| down just because one of your providers either blocked you or
| themselves went down.
| moojd wrote:
| I don't think a legal business can survive this kind of
| incident (becoming a pariah in the eyes of FAANG.) There isn't
| a point in being resilient against being dropped by one service
| if they all drop you in unison. If you try to take payments you
| will be dropped by all of the payment processors. If you try to
| run bare metal and are dropped by cloudflare you will be DDOS'd
| to death. If you go p2p you'll need to be able to ship native
| apps which will be dropped from the app stores or denied a
| certificate. Side-loading is already dead in iOS and things are
| moving that way for other major operating systems including
| desktop.
|
| If you are an illegal business there are a multitude of ways of
| working around many of these issues (using fake identities with
| hosting companies and other services, making money via shady
| malware riddled ad services, money laundering, etc...)
|
| Until recently I thought that p2p/crypto/etc was the solution
| but since you cannot do true p2p in the browser and must ship
| native code, at the end of the day you will still need the
| blessing of Apple/Google/Microsoft and agree to their TOS to
| exist. Of course this is perfect storm that happens rarely but
| it's still chilling to watch it unfold despite how contemptible
| the target is.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| It is funny that a social media company seeking to escape from
| the big tech stranglehold would decide to host their platform
| using a big tech cloud provider.
| AHappyCamper wrote:
| This only proves that the Big Tech companies need to be regulated
| and that Section 230 should be repealed. Break their power!
| Parler should sue them for billions. The federal gov't should
| also sue them for antitrust violations.
| chronicsunshine wrote:
| You seem to be confused. Repealing Section 230 would vastly
| increase the amount of moderation on social media platforms,
| because they would be directly liable for anything posted
| there.
|
| Also, the US has free enterprise. Businesses are free to choose
| who or what they do or don't do business with. Parler can sue
| all they want, but its a waste of their time and money.
| chrononaut wrote:
| > Parler should sue them for billions
|
| Parler should sue AWS for billions when AWS asked Parler to
| build a process that reduced violent content and Parler
| refused?
| zacharycohn wrote:
| Repealing Section 230 would have no impact on this. In fact, if
| Section 230 was repealed than Parler would be exposed to
| liability for the violent coup content users posted on it and
| be sued.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In fact, if Section 230 was repealed than Parler would be
| exposed to liability for the violent coup content users
| posted on it and be sued.
|
| Parler may still be liable for the violent coup content;
| liability for that isn't exclusively, or even mostly, the
| kind of "civil liability dependent on status as a publisher"
| that Section 230 provides immunity from.
| ryanmarsh wrote:
| Could a Muslim owned cloud service drop a gay customer, say an
| app like Grindr? I recall a case about a baker and a gay couple
| or something.
|
| Is this a civil matter or criminal?
|
| I grew up in a different era seriously none of this makes sense.
| Which groups are legally allowed to cancel the others? Where is
| that set forth in law?
|
| Thanks.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Literally any company can drop any user. It's in their terms of
| service. Of course there is a lot of calculation around
| dropping a high profile user, or a large class of users. It
| could result in social upheaval and backlash if they do or do
| not drop someone.
| notabee wrote:
| Most providers also don't allow ISIS on their platforms. Another
| known terror-sponsoring organization. For a long time now. And
| yet I don't see people tying themselves into free speech knots
| over ISIS getting deplatformed. I wonder why that is?
| sn_master wrote:
| Because ISIS leaders and the organization have been convicted
| by courts all over the world. Parler and the other
| conservatives who got banned were not convicted by any court
| within or even outside the United States. People are mad
| because big tech is shutting things down without any due
| process simply to appease the new emperor in power.
|
| Big tech made a decision that the hell with the judicial
| system, Democrats now have the executive and the senate, we
| have to bend the knee and kiss the ring to keep our section 230
| and don't get taxed into oblivion.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Someone doesn't understand civil law.
|
| If I dont have to wait for a child porn conviction to ban you
| from my site for posting 'illegal' content. I will do it
| immediately and sever all contracts.
|
| Its funny how we have the freedom of association right up to
| the moment it affects those supporting fascism, then all of a
| sudden a different set of laws matter.
| sn_master wrote:
| Can you give an example of content that was within that
| range of offense or danger that was posted on Parler?
| throwaway329123 wrote:
| ISIS used to publish videos of them beheading people as
| propaganda to recruit young people for the jihad. They'd also
| claim terrorists attacks and encourage their supporters to do
| the same. So, what is your point?
| kingdomcome50 wrote:
| I can't say for sure, but I think the point is to highlight
| some hypocrisy of the "free speech" argument.
|
| That is, if you claim censoring ISIS speech is okay but not
| Parler speech, then you must also be claiming that there is a
| line somewhere between the two that is being crossed. You are
| therefore acknowledging a limit to free speech. But that
| isn't the point yet.
|
| The point is that you (not necessary you) are drawing a line
| at all. It's that there _is_ a line. And if there exists a
| limit to free speech, it means _someone_ has to decide where
| that limit is placed. We are almost to the point.
|
| And if someone gets to decide where the limit to free speech
| is placed, who gets to make that decision and why? Clearly
| _you_ have put that line between ISIS and Parler according to
| your own belief system (or maybe not, you haven 't explicitly
| denoted anything). But the point is that there _exists_ a
| reason to limit free speech. I promise the point is coming.
|
| If there exists reasons to limit free speech then we have a
| problem. You see, you and I may agree ISIS should be de-
| platformed, but other people may believe other things and
| therefore have other reasons. The _point_ is that there is no
| such thing as "free speech". That everyone has their
| reasons. And that the people shouting "free speech" often
| mean "free speech within the thresholds that I am
| comfortable". That nobody actually, truly, deep-down believes
| in "free speech".
|
| The point is that "free speech" is a myth.
|
| So quit wasting your time calling out Amazon for infringing
| on something that doesn't exist (again, not necessarily you).
| mariopt wrote:
| You can't compare a group that kills thousands of people with a
| group that has it's own ideas. You could claim it is a
| dangerous one but you'll find many other accepted groups that
| would fall under the same category given the right perspective.
|
| Freedom of speech is not about hearing the ideas you like but
| the ones you dislike.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Many of the questions here are of the form "Can a private
| business drop a customer?" And the answer is a resounding YES and
| has nothing to do with constitutional free speech. A company
| refusing to provide service to a customer is NOT constitutional
| free speech censorship.
| beefee wrote:
| Our critical communications infrastructure is in danger. Are
| there any serious companies or organizations out there countering
| this wave of censorship?
| AnonMO wrote:
| I don't know why but I find it vey difficult to sympathize with
| parler. as a developer I was about to shun AWS because of their
| role as a infrastructure provider of the web, but even before the
| news came out and it was just rumors that employees were pushing
| for the removal. people on the platforms were calling for the
| bombing of server locations and the killing of the employees. At
| what point do we say its enough?
| JuliusPullo wrote:
| Giant corporations and the media, who used to encourage BLM and
| Antifa riots, are now openly using their power to humiliate and
| destroy their business competitors and political opposition. But
| who cares. Let's see what's new in Netflix.
| shrimpx wrote:
| The black cause is on a completely different moral plane than
| angry white people trying to keep trump in power.
|
| To cut off service to someone is not destroying a business
| "competitor." The fact that they were depending on your service
| indicates a type of cooperation not competition.
| 6sup6 wrote:
| According to your moral values. But your morals aren't shared
| by the entire world.
| shrimpx wrote:
| I agree, but every major decision takes into account
| societal forces. When I say "moral plane" I take into
| account broad societal forces. For example, broadly
| speaking in the USA the black cause for equal justice is
| broadly understood to be of much more importance and
| credence than the cause of the Aryan nation for white
| supremacy.
|
| And to reinforce my second point, Twitter's decision to ban
| or not ban someone is largely subjective (beyond the TOS)
| and they are sensitive to public pressures and the overall
| societal climate.
|
| It's not about my moral values but the aggregate moral
| values of society.
| Miner49er wrote:
| That's capitalism for ya.
| munificent wrote:
| I think what I've learned this week is that there's an economic
| failure mode that has societal harm. It goes something like this:
|
| 1. Some people want to share toxic harmful material with the
| world. Sharing that has real material hosting and serving costs
| that those individuals would rather not pay.
|
| 2. Platform hosts like AWS, Twitter, Facebook, etc. will host
| material for people. They pay for that by also showing users ads
| and the advertisers fund the company.
|
| 3. Advertisers don't want their brand associated with toxic
| content. But when a platform host has a sufficient diversity of
| good and bad content, the brand association is with the platform
| itself, which is neutral, and not the content it is shown next
| to, which may be toxic.
|
| The end result is that advertisers end up inadvertently funding
| the dissemination of toxic content. Extremists are essentially
| free riding, sort of like riding on the back of one of those
| rolling billboard cars and tossing out pamphlets.
|
| This happens because the host is essentially image laundering the
| toxic content. When a host isn't diverse enough to accomplish
| this, you can see that advertisers won't touch it. That's why
| Parler is toast. Advertisers _do not_ want to be funding this
| stuff but the hosts they use are too much of a black box to give
| them much control.
|
| So why do hosts end up accepting this toxic content? Is the
| relationship between host and toxic content authors parasitic or
| symbiotic? Cynics believe the hosts deliberately allow this
| because toxic content drives engagement and increases advertising
| revenue. A charitable perspective is that hosts would rather not
| be free riders for toxic content, but the problem is that
| separating the wolves and the sheep is too difficult (where
| "difficult" involves some combination of social, technological,
| and financial costs).
|
| What I haven't seen is anyone suggest that it is an _emergent
| property of financial incentives._ The primary way these hosts
| compete in the marketplace is through network effects and economy
| of scale. Social media host success is dominated by network
| effects. Advertisers go where the eyeballs are, and people go
| where the other people are. I don 't think there is any natural
| stable equilibrium that leads to a large number of small thriving
| social media companies.
|
| Economies of scale exacerbate that. Users don't like viewing ads
| so the less ads a host shows, the more popular it becomes. This
| puts heavy competitive pressure on them to minimize costs which
| relies on all of the economies of scale that software and tech
| offers.
|
| The end result, I think is a consolidation onto a few hosts which
| in turn host so much of everything that they end up with a
| neutral brand that advertisers can use even though there is a
| mixture of toxic content in there. I don't think anyone intended
| this to happen.
|
| But the good news is that if we do create regulation to break up
| tech monopolies and push against the natural forces of network
| effects and economies of scale, we may also see a natural decline
| of toxic content free riders. Because as these hosts get smaller,
| they're less able to be used as image launderers.
| chr1 wrote:
| Left wing democrats and Trump supporters want to eliminate each
| other, in a sense of eliminating their defining idea. Sadly in
| their war they are weaponizing the shared infrastructure, harming
| themselves and the people not interested in their war. (e.g.
| triggering the new wave of internet regulation in other
| countries, delaying a flight because there is someone with red
| hat etc.)
|
| The economy and civility that allow billions of different people
| to cooperate is a fragile thing. So we need to explain the
| warring sides that they need to go throw their stones in another
| place, e.g. try to use courts and legislation if they want to ban
| each other, or have different laws in different states.
|
| The situation is remarkably similar to the situation with
| religion in 1600s England, when people were trying to blend it
| with state, and only after long wars did they understand that not
| allowing someone into shop based on religion is not acceptable.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| AWS will be fine. Anyone not using these hosts to promote
| terrorism will be fine.
| chr1 wrote:
| > Anyone not using these hosts to promote terrorism
|
| The power always changes hands, and people who were passing
| laws calling random things "terrorism" end up on the other
| side of their laws. I guess for now you can have fun watching
| how Patriot Act championed buy republicans gets used against
| themselves. Sadly with full control over all branches,
| democrats will continue eroding freedoms and laws restraining
| the government, which eventually will be used against them
| too.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| AWS' response wasn't based on 'calling random things
| "terrorism"'. it was based on things that actually happened
| so I think the response is proportional.
|
| > I guess for now you can have fun watching how Patriot Act
| championed buy republicans gets used against themselves
|
| The government didn't get involved here. This is two
| companies deciding not to do business with each other
|
| > Sadly with full control over all branches, democrats will
| continue eroding freedoms and laws restraining the
| government, which eventually will be used against them too.
|
| The government didn't ban or restrain parler
| jtbayly wrote:
| Meanwhile Amazon hosts millions of random websites, Apple ships
| their phones with a web browser, and so does Google.
|
| Whoever is responsible for moderating the internet is failing
| badly. Why haven't the web browsers been banned from app stores?
| throwaway329123 wrote:
| Just like the future I've pictured five years ago: if you aren't
| woke compliant, you get to be shut down.
| [deleted]
| carabiner wrote:
| Free speech existed before Parler, and it will exist after.
| clarkmoody wrote:
| The great irony here is that these de-platformings are only
| concerned with non-state violence (or so they claim). There is no
| censorship of people advocating for disarming the entire
| population (using political violence) or depriving them of
| property (again, using state power).
|
| And as far as I can tell, none of the politicians who initiate
| and perpetuate _war_ are de-platformed.
| disposekinetics wrote:
| Twitter has hosted the Revolutionary Communist Party USA for at
| least ten years. It would seem they have no ethical problem
| with hosting calls for a coup.
| shrimpx wrote:
| Isn't trump's deplatforming contradicting your statement?
| igravious wrote:
| Is irony the correct word?
|
| --8<--
|
| In May 1996 Madeleine Albright, who was then the U.S.
| ambassador to the UN, was asked by 60 Minutes correspondent
| Lesley Stahl, in reference to years of U.S.-led economic
| sanctions against Iraq,
|
| LS: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I
| mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you
| know, is the price worth it?"
|
| To which Ambassador Albright responded,
|
| MA: "I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we
| think, the price is worth it."
|
| --8<--
|
| https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/170-s...
|
| Madeleine Albright is on Twitter: https://twitter.com/madeleine
|
| Depending on your morality and politics there are countless
| other examples. Perhaps hypocrisy is the more correct word?
| cosmiccatnap wrote:
| xkcd.com/1357/
| chasing wrote:
| Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened to
| have some disgusting content on it. The disgusting content was
| literally its reason for existing, despite all of the bland
| "we're just a free speech site" stuff.
|
| And I have yet to hear anyone discuss how "anything goes" and
| social media do not mix. It's much easier to turn a community
| toxic than it is to keep it healthy, and healthy communities (of
| any sort) need moderation. Certain people have turned this fact
| on its head and want you to believe that "completely free speech"
| and "healthy communities" are compatible because they want to
| overrun healthy channels with their garbage.
| macinjosh wrote:
| Many movies, music, and other forms of art are chock full of
| 'disgusting content'. Should we take those of the Internet?
| There are lunatics out there that will believe anything they
| read whether it is couched as fiction or not.
|
| Our right to say and read what we want cannot be determined by
| the lowest common denominator of what is 'acceptable'. That is
| how you arrive at an authoritarian monoculture, fast.
|
| The only correct response to disgusting speech is good speech
| used to tear it down. Both sides here, (I am not a part of
| either) have dug in so deep that they essentially live in two
| different realities or dimensions. When perception and the
| interpretation of the world differs so much between two groups
| there eventually becomes a point where they cannot coexist.
| This is where we are headed if we don't start trying to find
| common ground instead of the current environment of complete,
| unquestioned intolerance of the other.
|
| Self examination is what the world needs right now.
| nudpiedo wrote:
| so much politization in a single comment... the news often
| opens with disturbung content, and the world has many people
| who says daily pure garbage and we do not want to shut down any
| of those. Free speech is a fundamental part of western
| civilization, it cost us way too much to achieve it to just
| give it up like that. Stop with all those fallacies, they still
| worked on 2019 but not on 2021, at least not on HN.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I poked around on it some, and noticed something ...
| disturbing.
|
| I saw what I assumed were bots posting a lot of garbage links
| to 'articles' like "Obama compound raided!" and "8 Democrats
| switch to Republican Party" (that actually happened in Feb
| 2020, but the link was to an undated rerun and the link was
| posted.. 2 days ago?).
|
| The links were to such trustworthy sites as 'firstusanews.us'
| (made up, but all variants like that), and they _all_ would
| throw "update your flash player!" malware popups.
|
| Next to each of these links on Parler were view counts - 207,
| 412, 897, etc - of people who'd clicked the link to view the
| article.
|
| I could _not_ reply to the link with a comment like "this has
| malware" because... _my_ account was not verified. Only
| 'badged/verified' accounts can comment on 'links'. AND... the
| only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and take a
| picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc). This
| becomes incredibly lopsided "free speech" biased against
| moderating/critical voices.
|
| It was literally a field day for bots to post malware garbage
| and have thousands of victims per day, and no ability for
| people to warn others.
|
| On one 'article' I followed there were comments from people
| saying "I don't understand how Parler works" in the comments on
| the linked article. Indeed...
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| parler sounds like a classic honeypot
| mywittyname wrote:
| It's interesting how the natural inclination of the folks
| drawn to this kind of product leads to them being willing
| to provide a lot more personal information than they
| otherwise would to other similar platforms.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I'm not 100% sure on that. I saw a lot of 'non-badged'
| accounts, meaning they weren't providing much info. I
| guess, though, presumably many (most?) were providing
| real phone numbers, but Twitter tries to force that from
| people, so perhaps not much more than Twitter?
| munificent wrote:
| _> the only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and
| take a picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc)._
|
| <puts on tinfoil hat> Maybe the entire site is just an FBI
| honeypot for right-wing extremists? (It's obviously not an
| NSA honeypot, because they could afford to self-host.)
| shagie wrote:
| With a double lawyer of tinfoil you can ask "maybe the site
| is just a honeypot for a foreign government?"
| marz0 wrote:
| This twitter thread[1] suggests that it's possible. But
| probably best to take it with a grain of salt.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1327253991936454663
| cabalamat wrote:
| > the only way to get 'badged' is to use the mobile app and
| take a picture of govt ID (driver license, passport, etc).
|
| Some people have argued, based on this, that Parler was set
| up by the NSA to get data on people.
|
| Hoovering up data from social media is certainly the sort of
| thing the NSA would do.
| ChrisKnott wrote:
| This suggestion doesn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny.
|
| Do you really think the best way for a government agency to
| access government IDs is to secretly run a Twitter clone?
| runjake wrote:
| No, but it may be a good way to identify extremists
| and/or easily-manipulated persons amongst your populace.
|
| I'm not saying it's likely, but certainly possible.
| babar wrote:
| Would it make sense as a good way for a foreign
| government entity to get access to this information?
| mlyle wrote:
| I don't think it's true, but..
|
| > Do you really think the best way for a government
| agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a
| Twitter clone?
|
| The best way to get a bunch of white supremacists and
| insurrectionists to robustly, undeniably identify
| themselves might be to ask them to upload their ID. :P
| cbozeman wrote:
| This is so elegant in its simplicity that I actually
| believe it could be true.
| dstick wrote:
| Exactly, they take over darkweb marketplaces silently all
| the time for this very reason.
| matwood wrote:
| Yeah, early on I half joked Parler was setup by the FBI
| as a honey pot to keep an eye on domestic terrorist.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Do you really think the best way for a government
| agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a
| Twitter clone?
|
| No, but it'd be a really good way to get _behavioral_
| data on people and use a government ID to tie that data
| to real identities rather than pseudonyms.
| eganist wrote:
| > Do you really think the best way for a government
| agency to access government IDs is to secretly run a
| Twitter clone?
|
| The best method for target acquisition, sure. If someone
| is so perturbed by their reality being rejected by the
| mainstream that they're willing to sign up for an
| alternative to maintain their worldview, then running
| that alternative would be a fantastic way to identify
| people at risk of radicalization, domestic terror risks,
| etc.
|
| And if we're being clear, the USIC has run companies with
| this explicit mission in the past. In fact, running a
| company to provide one service at face level while
| providing a different service to the IC underneath is the
| mode that yielded some of the biggest intelligence wins
| in Western history. See Crypto AG.
|
| That said, no reason to run it themselves; they're well
| aware that someone else will end up running it for them,
| and with security nowhere near front-of-mind for any
| startup, they can just pick up the key from underneath
| the doormat and take the farm.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| They don't need IDs. They need to positively identify
| account owners with the IDs. @JohnSmith is not a lot to
| go on if you want to send the FBI after them. @JohnSmith
| of 123 2nd Amendment Street, Jackson County Kentucky is a
| lot more useful.
| cipherboy wrote:
| I believe OP is more insinuating that the combination of
| (ip, user identity {username, cell number, real-world
| identity}) is an attractive data source for such an
| agency.
|
| Of course they already have all government IDs. But tying
| it to a username helps correlate data across other
| services, and additionally if the user checks from mobile
| phone or other device, tying it to recent IPs could also
| be useful. OPSec could prevent some of that, but how many
| users are doing that?
|
| Just a thought. Not an endorsement.
| cogman10 wrote:
| Seems like scaring away people by asking for cell numbers
| and photo ids goes too far. The IP address would give the
| FBI/NSA everything they need to track down an
| individual's household. After that, it'd be a simple case
| of monitoring them to figure out who the extremist is.
|
| To me, the more realistic (and scary!) explanation is
| this thing is just one huge identity theft machine.
| [deleted]
| vergessenmir wrote:
| I certainly agree that it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. To
| suggest that setting up a honeypot to have fringe
| elements actively expose their views in what they deem as
| a safe environment is not outside of what security agency
| may do is a bit of stretch
|
| It's a interesting thought to entertain but Parler is
| most likely not this.
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| It's also a pretty good argument against anonymity being
| the cause of toxicity, considering these chucklefucks were
| literally uploading their legal identity so they could then
| shitpost about genocide.
|
| Actually why the flying fuck would someone think it is a
| good idea to plan an insurrection on this site in the first
| place?? It's like opposite day opsec
| foolmeonce wrote:
| The key to this kind of insurrection is that it is a
| privilege escalation. If they sufficiently upset normal
| process, enough emergency control goes to Trump, he will
| protect them (why stop pardoning now) and make sure all
| future elections are too risky and anyone who objects and
| sides with the principals of the republic is fired.
|
| Turkey and Russia are good examples of how this attack
| works. It relies on a large number of people, possibly
| even a majority, to overthrow the republic with a
| populist government with no rules the leader can't change
| or selectively enforce. The leader shuts down one threat
| to himself at a time, making his control permanent.
|
| IMO the military is obligated to arrest Trump for
| treason, which was the turkish backstop, and after a few
| rounds Turkey finally missed the last time. So once it is
| used, you have to patch your system to drop privileges
| from the Presidents office for the next round.
| discodave wrote:
| Another example of this strategy is the Reichstag fire.
| The Nazis blamed it on communists, and used it to claim
| emergency powers.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichstag_fire
| foolmeonce wrote:
| An example patch is to lower the limit on presidents to 1
| term. I can't imagine who would find that more unfair to
| their party.
| julianlam wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence
| bob_doggo wrote:
| Other people/organizations besides government intelligency
| agencies could use that data for their own gain.
|
| One example would be cambridge analytica...
| explorigin wrote:
| I was also curious about Parler but, when going to sign up,
| it asked for my phone number. Ummmm, no thank you. That kind
| of association is like going to a protest with your
| cellphone. Pretty easy to get the wrong kind of association
| attached to you.
| sigotirandolas wrote:
| I was able to sign up recently with a throwaway e-mail
| address and made up phone number. But I was also surprised
| it asked for it.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| I 'signed up' on the desktop version, but you can't the
| 'verify/badge' stuff is _only_ available via the mobile
| app, AFAICT.
| sigotirandolas wrote:
| I used the mobile app to sign up. However, I just signed
| up to lurk (Streisand effect), so I can't tell if the
| fake mail+phone allowed me to post/comment.
| macinjosh wrote:
| > Pretty easy to get the wrong kind of association attached
| to you.
|
| How sad is it that our free society has turned into this?
| So much for tolerance.
| Jochim wrote:
| This isn't new. McCarthyism is the example almost
| everyone knows.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| > That kind of association is like going to a protest with
| your cellphone. Pretty easy to get the wrong kind of
| association attached to you.
|
| "We're in! We're in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!"
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/derrick-evans-capitol-
| siege-...
| vijaybritto wrote:
| I had a good laugh looking at that :D
| frogpelt wrote:
| Does your choice of words cause you to pause and think
| about where we are as a society?
|
| The "wrong kind of association" for creating a social media
| account?
| no-dr-onboard wrote:
| Unlikely, but I'm certainly not one to say.
|
| Perhaps another question to ask would be, "How fair is it
| that others are pigeonholed to platforms like this and
| undoubtedly get the "wrong kind of association"?
|
| Are we reducing certain thoughts, beliefs and, dare I
| say, questions indiscriminately down to "crimethink"?
| MartinCron wrote:
| Unless you're WAY outside the political mainstream, you
| aren't pigeonholed into platforms like this. And if you
| are that far outside the political mainstream, holding
| thoughts and beliefs like "six million wasn't enough"
| then how much sympathy am I supposed to have?
| Jochim wrote:
| Should it? Society has always judged or kept an eye on
| people based on who they choose to associate with. If you
| were active on VK or WeChat I'm sure the government would
| have a few questions to ask you if you applied for a
| position requiring clearance.
|
| Beyond that, if a platform is known for encouraging
| behaviour that you and your peers disapprove of. It might
| make sense for you to avoid registering there in case
| your peers get the wrong impression of you should the
| information leak. While not exactly social media, you
| only need to look at the fallout from Ashley Madison for
| why you might not want to sign up somewhere because of
| "the wrong kind of association".
|
| Why social media would be the only forum exempt from this
| line of thinking I can't imagine.
| frogpelt wrote:
| No, you're right. I am fully on-board with the idea of
| being careful about who and what I associate with as it
| relates to maintaining personal integrity and character.
|
| I guess I was approaching that question from a different
| angle where "wrong kind of association" was from the
| perspective of Big Brother. So I probably made an
| incorrect assumption about what the parent comment
| intended.
| Jochim wrote:
| > I guess I was approaching that question from a
| different angle where "wrong kind of association" was
| from the perspective of Big Brother. So I probably made
| an incorrect assumption about what the parent comment
| intended.
|
| I agree with you that there probably is an element of
| this in the parent comment. Linking your "Cell phone at a
| protest" to you is probably going to be at the behest of
| the government.
|
| What the implications of social media and "big tech" are
| in our society is definitely a conversation worth having.
| It's just a shame that it's often only brought up in
| order to distract or deflect attention from bad
| behaviour. The conversation would be much more productive
| if it happened at a time when people weren't so inflamed
| by the issue of the day.
| danmaz74 wrote:
| In the early noughties I really believed that free speech
| online would work with just a very light moderation. We tried
| that approach with a rather small online community for an
| Italian political party where already all participants had
| pretty similar ideas.
|
| What I learned the hard way (as hard as having light PSTD) in
| the course of 3 years is that just doesn't work. You only need
| a handful of motivated people who won't stop at anything to
| push their agenda and narrative to create an extremely toxic
| environment which only favors the best liars and the most
| unprincipled people.
| r00fus wrote:
| So to actually use the massive information and connection we
| get through the Internet, moderation is key.
|
| It's really a cultivation effort - otherwise your "idea
| garden" will be overrun with weeds and pests.
| sn_master wrote:
| "disgusting" like what? Can you give a few examples? (legit
| ask, not denying it)
| DataSceince123 wrote:
| disgusting is anything anti-lgbt, anti progressive, anything
| that is a bi-erasure or trans smear. Disgusting is that which
| marginalizes or unfairly imputes the character of a minority
| community whether black, jewish, or hispanic, since these
| voices are not adequately represented
| minimuffins wrote:
| A reasonable comment was flagged and killed so I will repost
| it:
|
| > The NYT lied to the American public to whip them up into
| supporting the Iraq War, which led to the deaths of millions of
| people (many of them innocent).
|
| > Why won't AWS, Google, and Apple collectively ban them? Their
| open calls for violence were far more consequential and severe
| and serious than anything on Parler
|
| The question is a good one. In the hope of avoiding a similar
| fate, I'll state the original implicit question explicitly:
| Where on earth does the authority come from, which authorizes
| Amazon, ostensibly a private corporation, to arbitrate ANYTHING
| to do with public speech? Beyond just, say, their raw power and
| the inability of anyone to stop them.
|
| It's truly shocking to me that so many people are _celebrating_
| this. Not just, "Yeah, it's an overreach but these are weird
| times," or something like this, but just totally, brain-shut-
| down, unwilling to think through future implications, etc. This
| sets a precedent for the very, very small number owners of core
| tech infrastructure--not just media platforms, but physical
| server infrastructure!--to decide what we all get to see, and
| ultimately what's right and wrong (right: endless war, wrong:
| right-wing insurrection, however inept).
|
| Even if you think it was a necessary move (I don't, but surely
| reasonable people will), if we want to be adults about
| politics, we have to grapple with it and take these kinds of
| questions very seriously, not just heap censorship on top of
| censorship, avoiding the question.
| _alex_ wrote:
| The first amendment protects you from the government: you
| can't be prosecuted for things you say (then there are some
| case-law carve outs for inciting violence, etc).
|
| The first amendment does not prevent businesses from
| terminating a relationship.
|
| edit: my opinions are my views and dont represent anyone
| elses
| pfdietz wrote:
| The 14th amendment overrides the 1st in this case. You CAN
| be prosecuted for providing aid or comfort to an
| insurrection, even just verbal support (or, providing
| hosting services.)
| shuntress wrote:
| To clarify slightly: Some supreme court cases have
| settled that speech can be a form of engaging in
| "insurrection or rebellion"
|
| based (presumably, but I'm not a constitutional scholar)
| on the 14th amendment's section 3:
|
| _No person shall be a Senator or Representative in
| Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or
| hold any office, civil or military, under the United
| States, or under any State, who, having previously taken
| an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the
| United States, or as a member of any State legislature,
| or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to
| support the Constitution of the United States, shall have
| engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or
| given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress
| may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such
| disability._
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| At some point this becomes about what is right for society
| versus what you can legally get away with and what you feel
| like doing because you can.
|
| Is this, legally, a free speech issue on its own? No, and I
| support Amazon's right to "nope" out of anything they want.
|
| But in the current context of the rush to also prevent open
| Trump support in other areas like payment processing, and the
| way the media is hellbent on trying to inextricably link
| Trump support with terrorism, it should be apparent that
| there's a larger effort in play here, that feels highly
| politically motivated.
|
| What bothers me at this point isn't whether Amazon has the
| legal right to do this (they do).
|
| What bothers me somewhat is that there is a clear chilling
| effect that is intended across the board for a huge portion
| of the country.
|
| What bothers me even more, is that so many intelligent, well
| intentioned people are practically giddy about it.
|
| We don't all have to agree politically in any capacity, but I
| would at least hope we would have enough empathy to judge
| this in the context in which any reasonable person would see
| this on the other side, and be willing to advocate, at the
| very least, that we do this carefully and with respect for
| our fellow neighbors. Instead, I see absolute celebration
| about what can very fairly be seen (whether rightly or
| wrongly) as an attempt to ostracize millions of Americans.
| JPKab wrote:
| The worst part about the giddy, gleeful way in which they
| are shutting down these echo chamber apps is the complete
| lack of thought as to how this impacts and further
| radicalizes the users. I have a brother who is into Qanon
| and Alex Jones. All of this just feeds into and cements the
| narrative, and pushes him into alternative platforms where
| he is even less likely to hear or see more mainstream view
| points.
|
| It literally makes the problem that the people supporting
| this are CLAIMING they are trying to solve worse. I think
| it works wonderfully for the problem they are ACTUALLY
| solving, which is to cement an image of normal members of
| the political opposition as radicals on the verge of
| terrorism.
|
| I spoke to my brother last night.
|
| In an utterly predictable fashion, the Parler shutdown has
| made him worse. It turns out that when multiple global
| corporations collude to halt the communications of people
| who think they are being persecuted by a colluding body of
| global corporations, it makes their movement stronger. Who
| would have thought?
| rayiner wrote:
| It's not just the Qanon/Alex Jones folks. It pushes
| center-right people to hold ranks.
| tptacek wrote:
| Only because they're being spun up.
|
| Trump's opposition is going to be giddy about Trump's
| downfall and Parler's removal, the same way Trump's
| supporters were giddy when Trump won. It is not
| reasonable to expect the mass of political partisans on
| Facebook and Twitter to adhere to a code of civility.
|
| If your principles are altered by the behavior of
| strangers on Twitter, they aren't really principles,
| right?
| rayiner wrote:
| > Trump's opposition is going to be giddy about Trump's
| downfall and Parler's removal
|
| Sure. But seeing how many of these "giddy" people are
| blue checkmarks at real news organizations makes folks
| antsy about conservative news outlets (including
| mainstream ones) coming under attack as a response to the
| the Capitol Hill riot.
| kiawe_fire wrote:
| I have some family members who are similar.
|
| In the past, I would be able to help talk people through
| their conspiracy theories to come to a logical conclusion
| that what they were hearing was too big, too harmful, or
| otherwise incapable of accomplishing anything to actually
| be true.
|
| That approach is becoming harder the bigger this becomes.
| minimuffins wrote:
| > It turns out that when multiple global corporations
| collude to halt the communications of people who think
| they are being persecuted by a colluding body of global
| corporations, it makes their movement stronger. Who would
| have thought?
|
| A great point. I have yet to hear any response at all to
| this problem from the pro-censorship camp, much less a
| convincing one.
|
| Every attempt to solve the problem creates more problems.
| santoshalper wrote:
| I think perhaps you are correct, but I think we have come
| to the realization that people like your brother are gone
| and not likely to come back without serious help
| (medication, therapy, etc.) Just being exposed to other
| points of view does not seem to cure them.
|
| So given that, the only reasonable conclusion I can come
| up with this that this is essentially an enemy force
| living in our country - thousands of terrorists and
| perhaps millions of terrorist sympathizers. Our only goal
| at this point is to deny them aid, support, and the tools
| to organize effectively.
|
| Like it or not, we have entered into an era of asymmetric
| warfare with what amounts to a terroristic cult in the
| United States.
| JPKab wrote:
| "I think perhaps you are correct, but I think we have
| come to the realization that people like your brother are
| gone and not likely to come back without serious help
| (medication, therapy, etc.) Just being exposed to other
| points of view does not seem to cure them."
|
| This is exactly part of the problem: The hyper-dramatic
| reaction to a mob of political extremists that forcibly
| took over a public government building that occurred when
| the mob was right-wing, and when the building was the DC
| Capitol, that didn't at all occur when entire
| neighborhoods, court houses, police precincts, and
| Federal Courthouses had the exact same occurrence, with a
| minimal reaction from the press.
|
| My brother isn't mentally ill, anymore than the people
| dressed in black shooting green lasers in the eyes of
| Federal officers guarding the Federal Courthouse in
| Portland are mentally ill. If anyone had bothered to
| focus on the dangerous radicalization when it was people
| who they happen to agree with politically, maybe we'd be
| a bit further ahead on countering it. Instead, we waited
| until it was people on the other side of the spectrum to
| notice how dangerous the echo chambers have become, and
| will label these people members of a cult, without
| acknowledging the absolute nut jobs on our own side. I
| was in Portland over the summer, and the crowds around
| the courthouse were mirror images of the crowds around
| the capitol. The amount of derangement on display was
| equivalent. Instead of MAGA gear, it was all black bloc
| gear, but that's about the only difference.
|
| You are clearly a part of this sectarian viewpoint,
| because I'm sure you're going to tell me numerous reasons
| why ONLY these people are terrorists, and not the people
| who occupied several city blocks of Seattle with assault
| rifles for months over the summer (with no permission
| from the residents). I view them all as lunatic,
| dangerous terrorists, whether they have a MAGA hat or BLM
| shirt on, provided they are engaging in destruction of
| property or violence.
| rayiner wrote:
| I had multiple friends text me from Chicago, etc., about
| how the media wasn't covering what was going on right
| around them.
|
| To me, it boils down to something simple? There are
| apparently two groups of people who will lie to you about
| whether it's raining outside right now. One group just
| tried to overthrow the government, so I'm obviously
| hoping they lose. But that doesn't make me thrilled about
| the other group using this as an opportunity to press
| their advantage and further dominate media outlets.
| jkrems wrote:
| > the way the media is hellbent on trying to inextricably
| link Trump support with terrorism.
|
| Trump has moved himself outside of the system of American
| democracy and to this day refuses to acknowledge a
| democratic election result[1]. So yes, actively supporting
| him at this point is supporting an end to American
| democracy, pretty objectively. Linking the overthrow of the
| democratic order with terrorism, just after a mob entered
| the capitol and successfully interrupted the democratic
| order for multiple hours, doesn't feel a huge leap.
|
| Being conservative isn't linked with terrorism. Being
| libertarian isn't linked with terrorism. Supporting
| somebody who rejects democracy is linked with terrorism.
| It's seems pretty clear cut to me.
|
| [1] He said that a new administration will enter office but
| never that it does so rightfully based on a legitimate
| election.
| minimuffins wrote:
| > Supporting somebody who rejects democracy is linked
| with terrorism
|
| No. "Rejecting democracy," a position held by myriad
| political currents, each of which probably means
| something different by the term, is basically a run-of-
| the-mill ideological position. (It's not one that I hold
| personally, in case anyone is thinking about downvoting
| for "extremism.")
|
| You know what's linked with terrorism?
|
| Terrorist acts. That is: sporadic acts of intense,
| spectacular violence and devastation designed to rock and
| destabilize some existing political order. Usually but
| not always from "below" (sometimes it's literally from
| above, like from a B-52).
|
| I'm concerned pretty deeply, but very, very far from
| being terrorized by the pathetic spectacle at the
| Capitol. One reason for that is I don't take the
| extremely hyperbolic US press as literally as so many
| seem to.
| jkrems wrote:
| > No. "Rejecting democracy," a position held by myriad
| political currents
|
| Terrorism is subjective relative to the system in power.
| And I said "linked to" not "is". Having the opinion isn't
| terrorism. But giving money or vocal support to people
| who then invite others to or themselves try to violently
| overthrow a form of government is - from the subjective
| perspective of people in the current system - closely
| linked to terrorism. If they had succeeded in installing
| Trump as the continued leader in a post-democratic US, it
| wouldn't have been terrorism. Because they would've been
| judged under the new system of government. But they
| didn't succeed so far. So from the perspective of a post-
| Trump democratic government, it was terrorism. Terrorism
| doesn't mean every single person is scared afterwards, so
| your personal feelings towards it aren't the defining
| factor.
| minimuffins wrote:
| Nah, you're just letting the definition of terrorism
| float all over the place, like everybody else. Terrorism
| is whatever you don't like. Terrorism is bad guys. This
| is Bush playbook stuff.
| davewritescode wrote:
| You don't see a difference between what was occurring on
| Parler vs the New York Times writing an op-ed? You're
| intentionally conflating reasonable discourse vs facilitating
| a violent mob. Do I agree with that particular NY Times op-
| ed? No, but publishing is a reasonable way to share your
| views in a way Parler was literally being used to coordinate
| an attack on US politicians that has lead to the death of 5
| people.
|
| Websites like 4chan, 8kun, Stormfront, etc have been pushed
| out of mainstream hosting providers since forever. This isn't
| new. What is new is venture funded hate sites. This is big
| money trying to make a buck on selling ads to the most
| radical. Literally anyone who's watched the rise and fall of
| these free speech zones on the internet knew that relying on
| infrastructure provided by companies like Amazon was beyond
| stupid.
|
| You can put whatever you want on the Internet, there's lots
| of hosting companies around the world that are willing to
| help. Just don't cry when big American business wants nothing
| to do you with.
| minimuffins wrote:
| > conflating reasonable discourse...
|
| This is precisely my point! Who gets to decide what's
| reasonable discourse?
|
| I personally don't think the whole rank and file of
| establishment press jumping over each other to get in line
| behind the US state and starting two truly godawful wars is
| reasonable.
|
| If I was in charge of distributing news to people in the
| early 2000s, I'd have simply disallowed all of it and made
| sure people only heard opinions about how the USA is the
| world's leading terror state. How would you like it if I
| did that? Luckily, you'll never have to find out because I
| don't have the power Amazon et al now have.
|
| > Just don't cry when big American business wants nothing
| to do you with.
|
| This is a deflection. I hate these idiots. Most reasonable
| people do. They're dangerous (not as dangerous as the US
| military, but I still wouldn't cross them). My objection is
| to the structural/cultural development of a tiny handful of
| companies amassing for themselves a huge cultural and
| epistemological power. They're increasingly able to shape
| reality in ways 20th century culture industry couldn't even
| dream of.
|
| Cheer it on at your own risk!
| [deleted]
| davewritescode wrote:
| > This is precisely my point! Who gets to decide what's
| reasonable discourse?
|
| If it escalates to violence it's not reasonable, that's
| it. It gets muddy around state sponsored violence but the
| assumption is that we already have controls around that.
| I think that's a reasonable line to draw. If I go on
| Twitter and make specific threats to other users I
| believe that Twitter is within reason to prevent me from
| using their platform.
|
| > I hate these idiots. Most reasonable people do. They're
| dangerous (not as dangerous as the US military, but I
| still wouldn't cross them). My objection is to the
| structural/cultural development of a tiny handful of
| companies amassing for themselves a huge cultural and
| epistemological power. They're increasingly able to shape
| reality in ways 20th century culture industry couldn't
| even dream of.
|
| I agree with most of what you're saying. We as a society
| have handed over what I believe to be the vast majority
| of our day to day communication to a handful of companies
| that have no motive in mind other than profit. Social
| media has been shaping our society for the worse in way
| less overt ways for the last 15 years by driving eyeballs
| to controversial posts/topics to keep up engagement.
|
| I'm not pretending to have the answers, what I'm trying
| to point out is the phenomenon of big companies avoiding
| hosting questionable content is not new. What is new is
| the ubiquity of social media in our lives and politics.
|
| I think we're better without it personally.
| musingsole wrote:
| > You're intentionally conflating reasonable discourse vs
| facilitating a violent mob
|
| I know you think "facilitating a violent mob" applies more
| to Parler than the New York Times piece...but I'm going to
| disagree. Parler was anything but 'reasonable', but The New
| York Times (or individuals thereof) creating propaganda to
| lead a nation to war...can be described as facilitating a
| violent mob.
| fisensee wrote:
| While I agree with you mostly on the censorship from private
| companies on public discourse, I have difficulties to see how
| amazon is censoring anybody really. With the media platforms
| and social networks I am also very concerned with every
| action they take in regards to deleting content and banning
| users, since they basically operate as a monopoly for public
| discourse. But infrastructure services such as aws or google
| are only offering a completely optional service in regards to
| hosting a webpage/forum/etc. Everybody can buy a server and
| give others their ip address. By not offering their services
| to certain parties they're not silencing anyone, they're just
| not helping them. Parler could just as well buy some racks,
| like the many other companies that already do. So how is
| amazon deciding what people on the internet see and what they
| don't see?
| jmull wrote:
| > Where on earth does the authority come from, which
| authorizes Amazon, ostensibly a private corporation, to
| arbitrate ANYTHING to do with public speech?
|
| Where would the authority come from to force Amazon to
| support a message board they believe is for the purpose of
| inciting and organizing violent insurrection?
|
| Why shouldn't Amazon be able to make judgements about who
| it's safe to do business with? Why should Parler's decisions
| about who to do business with override Amazon's?
|
| Suppose Amazon did something Parler didn't like, and as a
| result Parler decided to move to a different provider...
| should Parler be forced to stay with Amazon after all?
| minimuffins wrote:
| Yes. Legally probably no one did anything wrong. My claim
| is not that any party behaved inappropriately according to
| law or the ordinary norms of doing business. Amazon is
| "within its rights." No argument.
|
| But if you look at this situation and don't see problems
| that are expanding beyond the ability of laissez faire
| contracts to account for (I'll be specific: it's the
| concentrated accumulation of communicative and cultural
| capital to a tiny number of minimally publicly accountable,
| opaque, private, exceedingly deep-pocketed firms), you're
| burying your head in the sand.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| France and Germany are making this point quite loudly now.
| rm_-rf_slash wrote:
| Is it a coincidence that the world's oldest democracy also
| happens to have many of the most robust corporations?
|
| These corporations are societally expected to uphold a
| cultural respect for free speech and the rights granted in
| the First Amendment, but there is no legal basis to compel
| them to allow speech or activity they do not approve of.
|
| Extrajudicial behavior such as terrorizing a legislature is
| harmful to these corporations' profitable predictability.
| Operators would be in violation of their fiduciary duties to
| allow such a direct threat to their bottom line to continue,
| let alone grow.
|
| In other words, money cares more about itself than anyone's
| feelings.
| minimuffins wrote:
| > no legal basis
|
| I agree. Those are the facts, for sure.
|
| > money cares more about itself than anyone's feelings.
|
| No argument.
|
| > terrorizing a legislature is harmful to these
| corporations' profitable predictability
|
| Strongly agree. This explains AWS's economic motivation.
| It's not that they just care so much about democracy and
| rule of law, though a liberal (read: Democrat loyal)
| employee culture there is probably also a source of
| pressure pushing them toward the move. In this case the
| stars align: liberal employees want it, and they can have
| it because it aligns perfectly with AWS's economic
| incentives.
|
| I think where we part ways is in thinking this is good for
| society. My problem with it is not that it violates any
| laws, but that it amounts to an incredible concentration of
| power in the realm of cultural production.
| rm_-rf_slash wrote:
| I never said this was good for society. My only intention
| was to illuminate a corporation's point of view and why
| it would make such decisions given the constraints and
| incentives at play.
| room271 wrote:
| I agree, but a lot of the arguments made seem to hit the
| wrong target. The issue is not 'First Amendment' rights (this
| applies only to government, not private companies), but
| monopoly, which causes many problems - this being just one.
| (Although actually I think the specific decisions made here
| are the right ones.)
|
| Now, in practice, it might be more accurate to call these
| markets oligopolies (certainly cloud infrastructure is more
| this), but this still leaves a few companies with dramatic
| power over important parts of society.
|
| And monopoly is a problem for the government to solve; these
| companies aren't 'evil' (any more than most others at least,
| except in virtue of their size), and the lasting solution is
| not to try and shame them or call them out here or claim
| victimhood (as the right has done) - though exercising voice
| can work as a short term tactic sometimes.
| antishatter wrote:
| There is a censorship issue here but it isn't a first
| amendment censorship issue.
| bArray wrote:
| > Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened
|
| > to have some disgusting content on it.
|
| You can't state that as fact. The platform itself was not
| inherently about spreading objectionable material. It was about
| being more free than Twitter.
|
| > And I have yet to hear anyone discuss how "anything goes"
|
| > and social media do not mix.
|
| As with all free speech, it had legal limits, such as threats
| of violence. We can argue about how effective the moderation
| system was in Parler, but I know for a fact that they
| repeatedly removed material that broke the law.
| santoshalper wrote:
| > You can't state that as fact. The platform itself was not
| inherently about spreading objectionable material. It was
| about being more free than Twitter.
|
| No man, it wasn't. They are just lying to you. Try to be more
| credulous.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200627/23551144803/as-
| pr...
| shuntress wrote:
| I find it comical that the more egalitarian solution[0] to
| enabling widespread free speech is outright rejected by the
| typical Parler user with some indistinct shouting about
| government overreach, regulation, or "competition in the
| marketplace".
|
| [0] mentioned in the article: _" I wish they[sic] were
| interoperable implementations of a protocol, rather than
| individual silos, but..."_
| bArray wrote:
| That's just their word - I would want to see the exact
| reason they were banned. Perhaps they were playing the
| internet troll game of "see how quickly I can get banned
| for Twitter points". Some amount of context seems fair
| surely?
|
| Also the Parler system is that you essentially are
| sandboxed for a short period of time when you first join -
| if you get tonnes of negative responses you get removed. So
| the fact they got removed in the first 24 hours makes
| sense.
|
| So: No man, it wasn't. They are just lying to you. Try to
| be more credulous.
| EpicEng wrote:
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBxXcAAuTkC?format=jpg&name=.
| ..
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBuXYAAB4y2?format=jpg&name=.
| ..
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgB3XIAcffGC?format=jpg&name=.
| ..
|
| https://i.redd.it/q2151lxlfpa61.jpg
|
| These were not taken down
| bArray wrote:
| For the first link, there was just one upvote in 23 hours.
| For the second link, there was 6 up and 3 down votes in 2
| days. The third link has all information removed, to the
| point it can't be verified. The fourth link had four
| upvotes probably in 1 day or more.
|
| There's no doubt the material is objectionable, but it was
| only up for a short time and got very little reach, even
| getting negative reactions within their own circles. And
| bare in mind, these aren't exactly random examples either -
| this is supposed to represent the very worst - and it's
| just some random people with little reach who get negative
| reactions from their own followers.
|
| Meanwhile over on Twitter you've got people sharing a
| picture of Trump's severed head, you've got "Hang Mike
| Pence" trending as a hash tag, you have people celebrating
| the death of the lady who got shot in the capital, etc.
|
| Perhaps a little context?
| EpicEng wrote:
| >For the first link, there was just one upvote in 23
| hours. For the second link, there was 6 up and 3 down
| votes in 2 days. The third link has all information
| removed, to the point it can't be verified. The fourth
| link had four upvotes probably in 1 day or more.
|
| I don't see how upvotes or views are relevant.
|
| >There's no doubt the material is objectionable, but it
| was only up for a short time and got very little reach,
| even getting negative reactions within their own circles.
| And bare in mind, these aren't exactly random examples
| either - this is supposed to represent the very worst -
| and it's just some random people with little reach who
| get negative reactions from their own followers.
|
| It's only supposed to represent the 15 seconds of work I
| performed in going through the dump of parler data.
| There's plenty more if you're interested. Again, whether
| or not it reached a lot of people is hardly relevant.
|
| >Meanwhile over on Twitter you've got people sharing a
| picture of Trump's severed head, you've got "Hang Mike
| Pence" trending as a hash tag, you have people
| celebrating the death of the lady who got shot in the
| capital, etc.
|
| And that shouldn't be allowed either. What's your point?
| bArray wrote:
| > I don't see how upvotes or views are relevant.
|
| Of course it's relevant. If your hate message is received
| by nobody - who is the victim? You're just shouting into
| the ether. The larger your reach, the more moderation
| becomes important.
|
| > And that shouldn't be allowed either. What's your
| point?
|
| Because Twitter isn't been wiped from the internet for
| breaking the exact same ToS. It's clearly selective
| enforcement.
| brentm wrote:
| I saw multiple posts & comments at the end of December with
| people literally calling for the murder of members of
| Congress on Jan 6th. I reported them when I noticed. I
| checked back after the Capitol Riots and the posts were still
| there. If they had any moderation it was not at all effective
| even for the most obviously unacceptable content.
| bArray wrote:
| > I reported them when I noticed. I checked back after the
|
| > Capitol Riots and the posts were still there. If they had
|
| > any moderation it was not at all effective even for the
|
| > most obviously unacceptable content.
|
| That's clearly a failing of the moderation system. I
| imagine they were very overwhelmed that day, as all social
| media platforms probably were (including Twitter and
| Facebook from what I saw).
|
| One problem Parler specifically are up against is that they
| were already unofficially blacklisted in multiple places
| that would allow them to raise the funding to hire
| moderators, due to cancel culture and the fear of it. They
| already couldn't get advertising, investments, etc. Now the
| situation is even worse, and when it reappears, it will
| likely have even less resources for content moderation.
|
| The only way out for them will be to distribute the problem
| of content moderation as some other platforms have
| apparently done (I am told Minds do this). Of course you
| have to rely on randomly selecting a fair jury in order for
| it to work - something that won't happen now.
| ekianjo wrote:
| People call for murder of the rich on twitter the whole
| time but nobody cares apparently. Double standards much?
| vkou wrote:
| If an armed mob flew in from all over the country with
| nooses, hoods, and zipties, to invade Richville, CA...
| And five people died, before it was dispersed by the
| police, the FBI, and the national guard, I'd expect
| #eattherich might also get banned from Twitter.
|
| Observe: That's generally the point when political speech
| crosses the line from 'soap box' to 'bullet box.' [1]
| Trump and his friends crossed that line on January 6th.
| #eattherich, Chapo Trap House, etc, has yet to do so.
|
| You're drawing false equivalences.
|
| [1] Despite having lost its case at both the ballot box,
| and the jury box. [2]
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty
| arrosenberg wrote:
| No. One presents a clear and present danger and the other
| doesn't.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The censorship is for your own protection.
|
| Twitter doesn't have a leg to stand on when Iranian leadership
| has tweets literally calling for the genocide of Israel, or the
| CCP has tweets using ethnic slurs against Uigher peoples. Yet
| why is it that lack of censorship is fine and "healthy"?
|
| One of the things I do, generally, when there's a call to ban
| something is to actually go and check it out whether it's a
| site, a book or a movie. And Parler is overwhelmingly just
| conservative twitter - and just like actual twitter, it has
| some nasty and gross content. Yet nobody is suggesting we take
| twitter offline despite their repeated failures to police their
| own content.
| Art9681 wrote:
| Twitter operates in the US so it is in its best interest to
| do what it can to maintain stability in its own home. To
| anyone working in US Government, Iran saying stupid things is
| common. What is not common is for US citizens to incite
| insurrection and chaos and then a sitting US president
| endorsing it.
| starkd wrote:
| Traditionally, the DOJ and FBI handle serious threats quite
| effectively. The concern is a tech oligarchy using a ham-
| fisted approach acting to take out its competition.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Actually, Parler has been use to literally plan an overthrow
| of the US government. That's why it's banned.
|
| So far, Parler and its associates have come a lot closer to
| dismantling American democracy than Iran ever has. That's why
| they get taken more seriously. Neither Twitter, nor Apple,
| nor Amazon want to be responsible for the rise of a fascist
| regime in the US.
|
| Too often, you can't see the rise of authoritarianism until
| its too late. This time, we saw it in time. I commend these
| companies for taking a stand, despite the obvious backlash
| they'll suffer as a result.
| starkd wrote:
| Respectfully, I think you missed the point. There are many
| voices on parler not out to overthrow anything. You may
| disagree with them, but they are within the mainstream of
| political debate. The power of a tech oligarchy to take out
| its competitor is a serious violation of anti-trust law.
| There are less ham-fisted approaches to dealing with
| illegal activity. The DOJ and FBI have effective means to
| do it.
| MartinCron wrote:
| If you're within the mainstream of political debate, you
| have no problem existing on mainstream social networks.
| starkd wrote:
| But, as a consumer, they have the right to choose the
| platform they want to be on. Twitter and Facebook have
| their problems. The element of user choice should be a
| constant incentive to improve.
| MartinCron wrote:
| Of course, I was responding to the sentiment of "You
| can't discuss conservative views on (platform x)!" which
| is generally untrue.
| r00fus wrote:
| Now that the Parler dataset has been harvested - we may
| actually get to see how many of those voices were
| rational.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Whether or not there are some rational voices on Parler
| is beside the point: Parler is not moderating the voices
| that support and plan actual violence. That means that
| any company that supports Parler, including Apple and AWS
| until recently, is potentially also complicit in that
| violence. Those companies have warned Parler that they
| need to moderate, and Parler has not acquiesced.
|
| Apple and Amazon absolutely have the legal right to not
| do business with anyone, for any reason; and they have
| the ethical obligation to not do business with anyone
| openly proposing violence.
| cabalamat wrote:
| > Parler and its associates have come a lot closer to
| dismantling American democracy than Iran ever has
|
| The USA isn't really a democracy. For it to be democratic
| it would have to use more democratic voting systems than
| FPTP and the electoral college.
|
| It's an oligarchy, but by the ruling class, which includes
| the big tech companies.
|
| > Neither Twitter, nor Apple, nor Amazon want to be
| responsible for the rise of a fascist regime in the US.
|
| Unless it's one where they are in charge.
|
| It's self-evidently impossible for Trump and the red tribe
| to overthrow the US system of government, they simply don't
| have control of enough of the levers of power.
|
| It would be a lot easier for Biden/Harris and the blue
| tribe to do so, as they control a lot more of the levers of
| power (e.g. academia, journalism, big tech).
| hackyhacky wrote:
| An armed mob very nearly did succeed in overthrowing the
| government. And I suspect we haven't seen the last of
| them.
|
| We have the closest thing to a democracy that any country
| has. I'm not going to split hairs about what a "real"
| democracy is. The fact is, our democracy is good enough
| that we, the people, (barely) stopped a fascist leader
| from maintaining power for the indefinite future, despite
| his very sincere desire to hold on to that power.
| starkd wrote:
| To be fair here, they didn't come anywhere near
| overthrowing anything. One woman protestor got shot by a
| CP officer. Three had medical emergencies (e.g. heart
| attacks). A CP officer died from a heart attack after
| getting hit in the head. A tragedy, yes, that never
| should have happened, but it wasn't organized enough to
| take over anything.
| valuearb wrote:
| Five minutes difference and they could have captured or
| killed half of congress.
|
| Then it becomes martial law time, with Trump retaining
| power.
|
| How close is that?
| _-david-_ wrote:
| They could have just talked to half of congress as well.
| Do you have any proof they were planning to hurt any
| members of congress?
| giantrobot wrote:
| They were chanting about hanging Mike Pence and several
| were carrying flexicuffs. But I'm sure they were just
| planning to peacefully air their grievances.
| valuearb wrote:
| Your right. Carrying zip ties, knives, guns and planting
| pipe bombs is how you start a peaceful dialog.
|
| I mean after you beat numerous police officers and murder
| one.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Can you show any proof that the mob was armed?
| ska wrote:
| > We have the closest thing to a democracy that any
| country has.
|
| Your overall point is reasonable, but this is a reach
| there are many countries now that are at least as
| democratic as the US by any reasonable definition, and
| some pretty supportable arguments that some of them are
| meaningfully more democratic.
|
| It's not that interesting to argue about I think though,
| because the differences are pretty small, and there is a
| huge gulf between all of the democratic countries and the
| non-democratic ones.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| LOL - That crowd wasn't anywhere near "overthrowing the
| government." Don't be ridiculous. And armed insurrection
| or coup looks very, very different than that. More guns
| and explosives. Fewer selfies.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >very nearly did succeed in overthrowing the government
|
| Is there any historical precedent for such a weakly armed
| group of people[1] overthrowing a heavily armed
| government?
|
| Seems like hyperbole suggest they almost succeeded in
| overthrowing the most heavily armed government in the
| world.
|
| [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706437
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Not by themselves. In coordinating with politicians who
| absolutely were trying to overthrow the government, yes.
| They were all part of the same movement.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| I agree theres a lot of people who want to overthrow the
| government, and that politicians are trying to incite
| them to do so, and that we me yet see a _real_ attempt to
| do so.
|
| But its naive to think the most heavily armed and
| powerful government in the world was nearly overthrown by
| a mob of people armed with fire extinguishers, zip ties,
| pepper spray, and little to no guns.[1]
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706437
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| Here is the scenario I'm thinking of: suppose the
| violence scared enough legislators into going along with
| the efforts to throw out electoral slates from those five
| states. That seems like something that very well could
| have happened.
| xornox wrote:
| Two party system the closest thing to a democracy...
| Perhaps you should re-evaluate and study other
| democracies.
| halfjoking wrote:
| "Storming the capital" had as much legitimacy as the "raid
| on AREA 51."
|
| Those people dressed like Huck Finn Braveheart had as much
| chance of overthrowing the US government as memelords did
| kidnapping an alien and bringing intergalactic peace.
|
| This feels like 9/11 all over again. You got the worst
| legislation in US history as a result of 9/11. (the
| Patriotic Act)
|
| What's going to be the Patriotic Act for the internet now
| everyone is convinced we are being attacked? We know they
| want to get rid of Section 230. How bad is the law going to
| be that replaces it?
| davewritescode wrote:
| How many people died in the raid of AREA 51?
| postalrat wrote:
| None because they never reached area 51. Just like they
| should have reached through the barriers at the capital.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Overthrowing the government? Certainly not. But I would
| not think it unreasonable to say that if the mob had
| found the actual senate, they would have killed some of
| them. Let's not construct artificial goal posts about
| what is utterly and extremely beyond the point of
| acceptable behavior. They killed a cop with a fire
| extinguisher. I have no reason to believe they wouldn't
| swing weapons at Democrat political leaders. Or even
| Republican political leaders.
| Fronzie wrote:
| They chanted 'hang mike pence', so yeah, also republican
| leaders.
| makomk wrote:
| Three and a bit years ago, someone who'd been radicalized
| by Facebook actually shot at members of Congress after
| asking about their party affiliation. This wasn't some
| hypothetical, it actually happened. Not only was there
| not this kind of concern about Facebook radicalization
| back then, the House Minority Leader Pelosi and most of
| the press outright lied and falsely claimed that the
| party whose Congressman was in hospital fighting for his
| life were the ones who had incited the attempted murder
| of a member of Congress, pointing at the shooting of
| Gabrielle Giffords. This was almost the exact, precise
| opposite of reality; that was inspired by a really
| bizarre personal disagreement with her which had nothing
| to do with national politics, whereas the shooting of
| Scalise seems to have been entirely about that.
| Nonetheless, the entire mainstream establishment pushed
| this bogus line.
|
| Bizarrely, the FBI even concluded Scalise's shooting
| wasn't politically motivated because the assailant was a
| wife-beater whose wife had got fed up with him and left
| him, and everyone in the press went along with it - even
| though if we applied this principle to domestic
| terrorists in general, the US probably wouldn't have
| anyone who counted as a domestic terrorist.
| mywittyname wrote:
| Also, these people knew exactly how to find the offices
| of Senators Clybourn and Pelosi. Apparently Pelosi's
| office is unmarked, nondescript, and pretty well hidden
| down a maze of offices. And Clybourn has two offices, a
| "public" one, with his name tag on it that he rarely
| uses, and his official one, which is obscured in a manner
| similar to that of Pelosi's. Attackers knew which one to
| choose. Some are suggesting that this indicates support
| from someone with insider knowledge of the Capitol.
|
| Then there's the whole topic of Boebert and her obsession
| with carrying a gun around Congress in the days leading
| up to the event then tweeting their locations live during
| the incident. It looks like telegraphing in hindsight;
| like she knew what was going down.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| The capitol building itself doesn't have that many
| offices when you get right down to it. Just wandering
| around and stumbling across Pelosi's office is quite
| plausible.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I mean, I've not been there, but according to
| Congresspeople affected, they feel that it would be
| impossible for someone unfamiliar with the building to
| stumble upon their offices. Especially since even members
| who've worked at the capitol building often still get
| lost in the complex.
|
| https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/08/congress-
| democrats-...
|
| > House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) mentioned that
| looters had found their way to his unmarked, third floor
| office and stole his iPad. He questioned how they could
| locate that office but not his clearly marked ceremonial
| office in Statuary Hall.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| Let's call it a couple hundred offices in the building
| itself. There are hundreds of people roaming freely,
| checking what's behind every door. It would be strange if
| they _didn 't_ come across particular offices.
| AugNoggin wrote:
| Created an account to reply: "Exactly".
|
| When I read other comments expounding on how close we
| came to a coup, I can't help but roll my eyes as memories
| of being stuck in Egypt at the beginning of 2011 surface
| again. It's tough to not go on a rant about the order of
| magnitude of violence, uncertainty, fear, etc. between
| what happened with the violent nuts at the capital and a
| coup.
|
| Not to say that the safety and/or lives of some political
| leaders weren't at risk, but once you've huddled in a
| dark apartment while a true overthrow is in play, you'll
| have no problem distinguishing between the two.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Really? They overwhelmed police and entered the building.
| The Vice President was moved to a "secure location." If
| they had arrived 5 minutes earlier, they'd have entered
| the House full of representatives, who could have been
| killed or taken hostage. We were a hair's width away from
| losing democracy and you can't take it seriously.
|
| We are, literally, being attacked by fascists,
| anarchists, and neo-Nazis.
|
| As I said, it's hard to see these things until it's too
| late. What happened on Wednesday was nearly the end. If
| you still don't see it, you're wearing blinders.
| halfjoking wrote:
| It was on purpose.
|
| Like I'm saying powerful people want to convince America
| we are being attacked. The best way to do that is to make
| it look like a real threat. They basically left the front
| door open, where BLM protesters got tear gas immediately.
| Do you disagree that the response to the two groups of
| protesters was a little uneven?
|
| The only difference in our opinions is that I think the
| response was on purpose. Huck Finn Braveheart is not a
| criminal mastermind. The number of protesters were
| miniscule compared to the BLM protesters. If the secret
| service and police actually wanted to stop them it would
| have been very easy.
| heroprotagonist wrote:
| Well, US institutions _are_ being attacked. But I agree
| that the mob is just a mechanism in the system that was
| wielded poorly and got out of control.
|
| We don't need to crack down on the mob, but we _do_ need
| to address the situation which led to it 's rise.
|
| The electoral college is an outdated piece of government
| 'software' that has been repeatedly exploited in recent
| years. Through 2016, there were 58 presidential
| elections. In 5 of these, the popular vote didn't match
| the electoral vote. About 8.6% historically.
|
| But for the last couple of decades, excluding this last
| election which is apparently still being argued, that
| percentage has been 40% instead of the 6.8% historically.
|
| If Trump's re-election argument fails, that life number
| will likely drop to 33.3% in my recent subjective
| experience compared to 8.5% historically, or rise to 50%
| in recent experience compared to 10.2% historically.
|
| Either way, these numbers mean something's wrong. "That's
| just a statistical variation you see in any set of data
| when giving it enough numbers" is not likely with 58 and
| 59 datapoints. Particularly with the inclusion of other
| data.
|
| If you check the history logs, you'll see a technological
| explosion the last couple of decades that coincides with
| these electoral results that suggest exploitation of the
| system. Technology allowing fine grained microtargeting
| is only getting better, and it's being used to exploit
| the electoral system.
|
| This time with disinformation campaigns and fine grained
| behavioral tracking and analysis (eg, Cambridge
| Analytica).
|
| "Yes, we say we're a democracy but technically we're a
| republic so that means everything is fine and we don't
| need the numbers to always match up with the voting
| majority." I mean, I guess. Sure. Until we decide to push
| exploitation further, beyond the boundaries of the game
| we've set up.
|
| This time it looks like the actors in the system missed
| the margin of exploitability within the game and went
| searching for new exploits. Instead of acknowledging the
| loss, they spammed every court they could find with
| useless lawsuits.
|
| Like a malware bot checking every port to try to
| fingerprint services and check for vulnerable versions.
| And they turned the disinformation dial up to 11,
| inciting their base to keep their political machine
| operational since it's got a 4 year reboot cycle and it'd
| take time for their port scanning to finish.
|
| This tactic led to a mob rioting. And it's unfortunate,
| but the mob were ultimately a system mechanic that got
| out of control. They were the tools or were 'acted upon'
| in a systems thinking perspective, rather than actors in
| the system. The actors were wielding them as a tool, and
| like any tool, irresponsible handling resulted in injury.
| vangelis wrote:
| I doubt any of the StopTheSteal group has read Kropotkin
| or spouts on about mutual aid. Interesting
| characterization there...
| lurker619 wrote:
| Coups in the 21st century may not look like coups of the
| 20th century. This article may interest you -
| https://themargins.substack.com/p/the-first-phygital-coup
| reddog wrote:
| I've read that Twitter and Facebook were used more than
| Parler to orchestarate the capital takeover. But, being
| founding members of the high tech corporate cartel, they
| will never get banned.
|
| Your right though -- you often can't see the rise of
| authoritarianism until its too late. Sometimes it comes
| from the place you least expect.
| eplanit wrote:
| Uh, the "rise of authoritarianism" is the tech companies
| acting -- at the moment that Congress confirmed Biden's win
| -- to silence conservative voices (yeah, yeah, private
| companies, I know). Twitter and Facebook have given Marxism
| (i.e. BLM) a platform during these past few years, whose
| explicit goal is to dismantle American democracy.
|
| We're indeed seeing the rise of authoritarianism...I think
| you're confused as to who the authoritarians are.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| A private company cannot be authoritarian.
| Authoritarianism is a form of government. BLM is not
| anti-democracy, while those who invaded the Capitol
| obviously are.
|
| If you consider the silencing of organized threats to
| overthrow the US government by neo-Nazis and Confederates
| to be acts against "conservative voices," this tells us a
| lot about what "conservatism" means now.
| StellarTabi wrote:
| > A private company cannot be authoritarian.
|
| Almost all private companies are authoritarian. Examples
| of non-authoritarian companies might include co-ops.
| jackthehammer wrote:
| Then why does it feel like authoritarianism when Twitter
| and Facebook remove all content from and lock out the
| President of the United States and any of his supporters?
| eplanit wrote:
| When a private company acts in union with, on behalf of,
| and/or in support of the regime and its political
| objectives, it is part of the authoritarian system. I
| think you'd say the same of Twitter were it aligned with
| the right instead of the left.
| davewritescode wrote:
| You're the only one who's confused. BLM is both a
| sentiment and a real political organization. The
| sentiment is overwhelmingly popular whereas the actual
| political movement is not. You're attempting to lump them
| together in a way that most people don't
|
| It's really hard to argue that conservative voices are
| completely silenced when the have the largest network
| news television station in the country. Take a look at
| the New York Times best seller list sometime and look at
| how many conservative authors make the list.
|
| Yes, you can't spread fake bullshit on Twitter anymore
| about how the election was stolen but even that would've
| been ok until 5 people died trying to overthrow the
| capital.
|
| Actions have consequences, and unfortunately for
| conservatives those consequences are a purge from social
| media as big business seeks to distance itself from
| radical right-wing politics.
|
| Democracy won here, sorry.
| eplanit wrote:
| If you read your first sentence, you might see how funny
| it actually is:
|
| "You're the only one who's confused. BLM is both a
| sentiment and a real political organization. The
| sentiment is overwhelmingly popular whereas the actual
| political movement is not."
|
| Yeah, that's not confusing at all. Kind of like "Hey,
| 'Defund the Police' doesn't mean _defund_ the police "
| Maybe the organizers should hire (better) PR firms.
| davewritescode wrote:
| BLM has fantastic PR for an organization that has pretty
| far left views. That was exactly my point. People are
| generally positive towards to main stated goals of the
| organization, preventing police abuse against black
| people. It resonates with their own experience and the
| experience of black people they know.
|
| You're trying to conflate the detailed political views of
| an organization with people who tend to agree that Black
| people need to be treated like human beings by police
| officers.
|
| I also agree, 'Defund the Police' is a shit term for
| Police Reform.
| wavefunction wrote:
| Can't reply to davewritescode but... BLM as a political
| movement believes that American law enforcement
| disproportionately targets black citizens with violence
| disproportionate to the alleged crimes or situations in
| which the violence occurs. This is not a far left view in
| my opinion, as someone who hold "far-left"/left-
| libertarian views on a variety of subjects. "Defund the
| police" has been proposed by some people who share this
| core beliefs proposed by the BLM movement as a way to
| reduce the disproportionate violence against black
| citizens in the US. Unfortunately, I think it is a
| vaguely and poorly phrased slogan because I have seen
| that for some it means abolishment of law enforcement and
| for many others it means restructuring the funding of law
| enforcement to provide alternative public services to
| people who are having a mental health crisis, for
| example. The idea of reducing law enforcement budgets or
| redirecting some of the resources currently budgeted for
| law enforcement to alternative public services doesn't
| seem to me to necessarily consist of a "far-left" policy
| either, though that is because I think the notion of
| reducing law enforcement violence when unwarranted should
| and is a concern of people of most citizens other than a
| distinct minority. Of course we are all awash in the
| propaganda and media messaging of disparate groups with
| various agendas so understanding all of this in a shared
| and cohesive manner as a society is messy and somewhat
| difficult, but well-worth trying.
| gedy wrote:
| Yeah as a centrist, the double standards we are seeing is
| what concerns me the most. Instead of all violence and hatred
| is bad it's "well this is different because they are on our
| side", that's for "the right reasons", etc to read between
| the lines.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Twitter did act against a Chinese tweet about Uygurs the
| other day
| ekianjo wrote:
| Which one?
| causalmodels wrote:
| The one where they were trying spin forced IUDs and
| sterilizations as a way to promote gender equity and
| reproductive health[1]
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/twitter-
| takes-do...
| lanevorockz wrote:
| Free Speech is such a disgusting thing we should never allow
| low IQ people to exist. Is that what you are saying ?
| santoshalper wrote:
| Yeah man, obviously that is what we are trying to say. You
| got us, this is just a front for a giant eugenics conspiracy
| run by Big Tech.
|
| Get help.
| DickingAround wrote:
| One of the tenets of this site is that we ask everyone to
| assume best intentions from everyone else.
| qez wrote:
| The term healthy is doing a lot of work for you. If you mean
| signal/noise ratio, then yes, and HN truly optimizes for that,
| so it makes sense that you're here. But HN doesn't optimize for
| total amount of signal, for example, buried underneath a lot of
| noise. Personally, I care about content a lot more than I care
| about "community."
| CivBase wrote:
| To be fair, any social media platform built on the idea of
| protecting free speech will be the _only_ platform on which
| "disgusting content" can be posted. That means it will
| inherently have a disproportionately large amount of
| "disgusting content".
|
| And that's before considering the insane uphill battle any
| social media platform has to fight to become as popular as the
| likes of Twitter, Facebook, etc - assuming the presence of
| "disgusting content" does not limit its ability to ever scale
| that much to begin with.
|
| Btw, I'm using the phrase "disgusting content" to quote the OP
| because I can't think of a more appropriate phrase, not to
| indicate sarcasm or cast doubt on the nature of the content.
| I've never been to Parler, but I trust that there was some
| pretty awful things being said there.
| DangerousPie wrote:
| It's not like this was some innocent small service that
| suddenly got taken over. Parler was built by Trump supporters
| for Trump supporters.
| CivBase wrote:
| Sure, but every Trump supporter I've talked to objects to
| what happened last Wednesday. Even if the Trump supporters
| I know are not representative of all Trump supporters,
| clearly not all of his supporters seek to commit or condone
| acts of violence. Just because the site was originally
| built for Trump supporters does not mean it was inherently
| built for "disgusting content".
| DataSceince123 wrote:
| for the record, disgusting should be anything anti LGBT, and
| that's why parler had to be eliminated
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| The NYT lied to the American public to whip them up into
| supporting the Iraq War, which led to the deaths of millions of
| people (many of them innocent).
|
| Why won't AWS, Google, and Apple collectively ban them? Their
| open calls for violence were far more consequential and severe
| and serious than anything on Parler
| betterunix2 wrote:
| The NYT did not make the Iraq war possible. It did not
| facilitate planning the war. It did not play any role in
| convincing the Bush administration to go to war.
|
| Can we stop with the "whataboutism" already?
| _pmf_ wrote:
| Reframing pointing out hypocrisy as "whataboutism" is the
| greatest trick the devil ever pulled.
| analog31 wrote:
| Every tiny paradox or inconsistency can be reframed as
| hypocrisy, to the point where that term has lost its
| meaning.
| cabalamat wrote:
| Maybe.
|
| But all humans are self-serving hypocrites, it is in our
| nature.
| Reedx wrote:
| They played a large role in selling the war to the public
| (manufacturing consent).
| dontreact wrote:
| When the state is lying, it is not easy for reporters to
| find out that they are lying. They printed what was at
| the time a bipartisan consensus which had formed on the
| basis of lies.
|
| So I guess they were involved, but the journalists in the
| organization in the time did not have the power or the
| information to swim against the currents of what was
| happening. Even if they had shut down their paper, we
| would have gone to war with Iraq.
|
| On the other hand, Parler has purposefully created a
| space for people to plan violence against the state, and
| refused requests to be more careful about moderating.
| IncRnd wrote:
| > They printed what was at the time a bipartisan
| consensus which had formed on the basis of lies.
|
| And that is why truth by consensus is not a good way for
| a reporter to report compared to actually investigating
| somethng beforehand.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Have you ever seen anyone seriously defend what Judith
| Miller (et al.) actually did?
| doggosphere wrote:
| The actual reason for the war: an informant fed the
| government bad intel and the state looked the other way
| because they wanted a reason to invade Iraq.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curveball_(informant)
| drewmol wrote:
| "the actual reason for the war...because they wanted a
| reason" Agreed.
| sthnblllII wrote:
| That is like saying the reason the bank was robbed was
| because it had so much money in it.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clean_Break:_A_New_Strate
| g...
|
| The Bush administration officials who sold those lies to
| the public were zionist jews who had written this policy
| paper just 5 years before Bush appointed them into the
| government.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| PNAC has nothing Jewish about it and you're a troll
| afavour wrote:
| I see the parallel you're trying to draw here but it doesn't
| make a lot of sense. I'm pretty sure the US was going to war
| in Iraq no matter what NYT said, but I'm happy to be proven
| wrong.
|
| The faulty NYT reporting gave the government a certain level
| of cover to allow them to do what they already planned to do.
| Parler was a forum for participants to discuss and actively
| plan sedition. And there's already violence threatened in the
| days around inauguration so it stands to reason it could have
| served the same role again.
| andrewmutz wrote:
| The Iraq war is a great example because it highlights how
| rare this is. You had to go back 15 years to find an example
| of the mainstream media misleading people on this scale.
|
| It can be true that both:
|
| - The NYT deserves a lot of blame for the lead up to the iraq
| war
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#The_Iraq_War)
|
| - Newspapers generally do a really good job of fact checking
| the articles they print
| andrewclunn wrote:
| And I supposed Epstein killed himself as well? Much more
| often the mainstream media simply "memory holes" things it
| doesn't want you to know about. I mean they certainly tried
| to get us into war with Syria (anyone remember the
| "reporter" who sniffed nerve gas?) The lies are blatant and
| unending, but we all know what side the bread is buttered
| on for tech start ups, which is why this "news aggregator"
| is such a laughable joke for anything related to politics.
| reddog wrote:
| >You had to go back 15 years to find an example of the
| mainstream media misleading people on this scale.
|
| Have you forgotten 3 years of the MSN saying Trump's
| presidency was illegitament because he stole the election
| by coluding with the Russians?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I missed anyone on MSN(BC) saying his election was
| illegitimate. There were questions about it, for sure.
| There was the essentially incontrovertible fact that he
| won in the EC without winning the popular vote, which is
| an unfortunate feature of our system. That does lend a
| certain sense of "illegitimacy" but not in the sense of
| something illegal having happened, more a sense of "moral
| legitimacy". A few weeks after his election, the
| overwhelming majority of progressives accepted that Trump
| was the officially elected president of the USA. We
| didn't _like_ it, but we accepted it.
|
| The issues regarding Russian interference were not
| centered on collusion, but on ... well, interference
| (which some believe went so far as to include actual
| collusion).
|
| Mueller's report and the Senate report _did_ find
| conclusively that the Russians did interfere, and did so
| with the goal of getting Trump elected. Mueller said that
| they did not find evidence of active collaboration
| between the campaign and the Russians ... here 's the
| current Wikipedia summary:
|
| >did not find sufficient evidence that the campaign
| "coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in
| its election-interference activities". Investigators
| ultimately had an incomplete picture of what happened due
| to communications that were encrypted, deleted, or not
| saved and due to testimony that was false, incomplete, or
| declined. However, the report states that Russian
| interference in the 2016 presidential election was
| illegal and occurred "in sweeping and systematic fashion"
| but was welcomed by the Trump campaign as it expected to
| benefit from such efforts
|
| Again, I recall essentially nobody in any position of
| power (certainly not elected Senators) saying the Trump's
| election was illegitimate. People did say that his
| election was aided by Russian interference (Mueller and
| the Senate investigation state this clearly), and that it
| was/is unfortunate to have a president elected without
| winning the popular vote.
| cogman10 wrote:
| There's a really good reason for that. Journalistic
| standards are a defense in court against lawsuits. The
| truth is a defense against Libel.
|
| But further, even just acting in good faith can be a
| defense against libel. It's only when you knowingly publish
| a false statement that you get in legal hot water.
|
| This is why Fox news and the like have been doing 180s on
| voter fraud lies. It's not because they have the best
| interest of the public at heart, it's because they are
| trying mitigate liability.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > which led to the deaths of millions of people (many of them
| innocent).
|
| Actually, looking up the numbers right now, the total
| civilian death rate is perhaps 1 million at most, more likely
| somewhere in the 100,000s. Iraq Body Count gives ~200k
| civilian deaths; estimation from the number of internally-
| displaced peoples (basically figuring that displaced-to-dead
| ration is between 5:1 and 10:1) suggests a number more like
| ~700k civilian deaths. Extrapolating excess death counts
| suggest that the latter number is more accurate.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| My bad, it's still far more than anyone on Parler is
| responsible for.
|
| Perhaps if you consider the fallout of the Iraq War (rise
| of ISIS, Syrian Civil War, etc.) you get more but the point
| is the same
| hashbig wrote:
| I remember very well as a middle eastern how ISIS was freely
| allowed to use Twitter, Facebook and Youtube for recruitment
| and propaganda in 2015 and none of those platforms did anything
| about it. Also just today this story was on the front page in
| HN: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-
| facebo...
|
| So spare us all the "No hate and violence on our platform" BS.
| Either you go after all hate and violence or you are just a
| hypocrite.
| [deleted]
| wilsynet wrote:
| I mostly agree with this, that we should do more about hate
| and violence. And do it more consistently and transparently.
|
| To the best of my knowledge, YouTube tries hard to do this.
| And Twitter has been trying to do a better job at this. And
| Facebook hasn't been particularly good about doing this at
| all. If I am completely wrong about this, someone should set
| the record straight.
|
| Perhaps their position is evolving. I'd be curious to revisit
| the evolution of this problem 365 days from now and take
| another checkpoint.
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| What kind of world are you trying to advocate with comments
| like these? Just because you soiled the bed in the past you
| should just keep doing it?
| trsohmers wrote:
| The US government asked Twitter and other social media sites
| _not_ to ban certain groups of ISIS twitter accounts until
| they were able to gain enough information... afterwards
| Twitter had no problem deleting hundreds of thousands of ISIS
| /other extremist accounts en mass.
| ccsnags wrote:
| There's plenty of hate on Twitter. They won't go after all
| hate and they don't care that you think they are hypocrites.
|
| Stop trying to convince these people of hypocrisy. They
| aren't listening to critics and they lack the ability to see
| the world outside of the tight frame they were provided. We
| are all like this most of the time but I find that the moral
| panics have created situations where online communication is
| not possible along political lines.
|
| Focus on you, not them. People who build ideas from self-
| reflection are less volatile and not as susceptible to moral
| panic than those who define themselves by politics.
|
| If all people tried as hard to understand each other as they
| do framing their political opponents as evil, we wouldn't be
| in this place. Interesting times.
| valuearb wrote:
| Whataboutism! Whataboutism!
|
| The fact that a platform didn't do the right thing before,
| doesn't mean it can't do it now.
|
| What, you came out of the womb with perfect understanding of
| right from wrong?
| flyinglizard wrote:
| I don't think Twitter had any difficulty discerning right
| from wrong when it came to ISIS, even back in 2016.
| valuearb wrote:
| Which is why it did the right thing at the request of US
| intelligence services, and kept them up so they could
| track and gain info on them.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Revealing a political bias evidenced by selective
| enforcement is not "whataboutism." It's informing motive.
| btbuildem wrote:
| Cynical take? I think Twitter and others are acting on advice
| of counsel, scared they'll be considered an accessory to
| insurrection.
|
| But... horses, barn, door
| tomcam wrote:
| A lot of this is true, but I believe. I'm guessing you aren't
| from the USA, but here, "disgusting content" is completely
| covered under the concept of freedom of speech. Our Supreme
| Court has already ruled that there's no Constitutional idea of
| "hate speech". The concept of freedom of speech is here to
| protect things that other people think are despicable.
|
| This whole deplatforming thing will have vast unintended
| consequences. It will hit people like you, because these
| movements always eat there own.
| EpicEng wrote:
| >A lot of this is true, but I believe. I'm guessing you
| aren't from the USA, but here, "disgusting content" is
| completely covered under the concept of freedom of speech
|
| Sure about that?
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBxXcAAuTkC?format=jpg&name=.
| ..
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBuXYAAB4y2?format=jpg&name=.
| ..
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgB3XIAcffGC?format=jpg&name=.
| ..
|
| https://i.redd.it/q2151lxlfpa61.jpg
| driverdan wrote:
| Free speech doesn't apply to non-government resources. A
| company can ban any speech they want. Plus there is speech
| that isn't protected, like certain violent threats, which is
| the biggest problem with Parler.
| macinjosh wrote:
| > Free speech doesn't apply to non-government resources.
|
| Where did the parent comment mention the government? They
| referenced the concept of free speech. That is not the same
| thing as the first amendment which is what you are
| referring to.
| jjcon wrote:
| > Free speech doesn't apply to non-government resources
|
| Of course it does! That's like saying ethics don't apply to
| corporations.
|
| If you meant the first amendment you would be correct but
| free speech is a long standing liberal ideal and is
| absolutely not the same thing nor is it what is being
| discussed in this context.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > > Free speech doesn't apply to non-government resources
|
| > Of course it does!
|
| Well, it does in that free speech _is exactly_ the
| liberty of owners of non-government resources to choose
| how to control their use in expressing, relaying, and
| amplifying speech.
|
| But "free speech" doesn't provide any entitlement for any
| other party _against_ the interests of the owners of non-
| government resources.
| deet wrote:
| I'll address your second point:
|
| We do need to think about the precedents we are setting with
| respect to free speech. It's possible that action might be
| needed in the short term to moderate these channels. But we
| must also consider the longer term in a world that is rapidly
| evolving.
|
| I'm less concerned about specific, currently existing platforms
| like Parler, Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. These "social
| media" platforms are mere trinkets and could go away and
| society would carry on. In moderating or completely dissolving
| them we lose little.
|
| I am more concerned about the nature of communication when the
| channels of communication are centrally controlled and/or
| controlled by private entities. We have no idea how digital
| communications will evolve or how important they could become.
|
| Our lives are increasingly become digital... Imagine a world 50
| or 100 or X years from now when people _never_ leave their
| homes (except perhaps through VR?) and nearly all human
| interaction is via digital means. There's a good chance those
| digital means will be run by private entities. So if we want to
| preserve the liberties we have today we need to think about how
| those would be protected in the future, and that means being
| careful about what precedent we set today.
|
| Are we really willing to have _all_ of our communication
| moderated or potentially terminated in a such a future?
|
| It's true that we might need to take action in the present, but
| let's not forget that we are simultaneously shaping our
| futures.
| neogodless wrote:
| > So if we want to preserve the liberties we have today we
| need to think about how those would be protected in the
| future, and that means being careful about what precedent we
| set today.
|
| The doom may be inevitable. who knows? I don't mean to be a
| defeatist. But I would say if a _single_ private entity (or
| alliance) did control all digital communication, any actions
| they took could be invisible to anyone that opposed them,
| assuming they had sufficiently advanced machine learning
| capable of preventing subversive communication. You would
| _need_ alternative options for communication, digital or
| otherwise to have any hope of overcoming such a hypothetical
| scenario.
|
| My hope would be that we continue to have _utilities_ such as
| phone lines, that _internet_ would ultimately end up treated
| as a utility in the same sense as phone lines (especially if
| it completely replaces them, which is largely is doing),
| radio (just as ham radio operators believe in the importance
| of maintaining their systems), etc.
|
| And my other hope would be that we continue to legislate and
| enforce against monopolies, not just on capitalistic entities
| but especially on privately run communication channels.
| xyzelement wrote:
| >> Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened
| to have some disgusting content on it. The disgusting content
| was literally its reason for existing, despite all of the bland
| "we're just a free speech site" stuff.
|
| I don't know if that's true. I downloaded the app a few months
| ago to check it out. I followed some of the same folks I
| followed on Twitter (I guess you'd call them center-right?) and
| it was basically civil discourse about politics.
|
| I didn't see anything "disgusting" and I didn't work hard to
| avoid it. Granted I didn't spent a ton of time in the app and
| didn't explore deeply, but the claim that it was just filled to
| the gills with something terrible doesn't ring true to me.
|
| Unless the definition of disgusting is "someone who may not
| have voted for Biden" - but I don't share that definition and I
| don't think most sane people do.
| cbozeman wrote:
| I really struggle with this. Most websites have block or mute
| buttons. So why is it we can't just use those?
|
| You see something you don't like, don't click on it.
|
| You see _someone_ you don 't like, just block or mute them.
|
| Almost every platform lets you choose the level, of lack
| thereof, of discourse you want to have with people with whom
| you disagree.
| MartinCron wrote:
| You can't really "mute" a murderous mob that shows up at the
| capitol. This isn't about seeing stuff you don't like, this
| is about a platform being used to directly incite political
| violence.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| TBH physical security of vital structures like Capitol
| should not rely on someone's ability to moderate some
| platform.
|
| There are many other possible attackers who won't be
| coordinating themselves on social networks in the open.
|
| Capitol et al. should have robust enough security to keep
| most threats out, because some threats just won't be easily
| predictable in advance.
| MartinCron wrote:
| Regardless of how well the Capitol is guarded, inciting
| violence is still a crime.
|
| If I orchestrate a criminal conspiracy to rob Fort Knox,
| it is still a criminal conspiracy when it eventually
| fails.
| cbozeman wrote:
| The Capitol has its own police (they're literally called,
| the Capitol Police). You can't mute them, but you can make
| it clear that any attempt to breach the Capitol will result
| in deadly force.
|
| And it should have.
| MichaelMoser123 wrote:
| Who's next? Telegram?
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Telegram has moderators and has complied with Apple's demands
| in the past.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| > The disgusting content was literally its reason for existing,
| despite all of the bland "we're just a free speech site" stuff.
|
| I disagree with this. My experience with Parler was very
| limited, but from a quick glance, I was not able to find any
| call for violence. I'm sure it exists, but the sense I got is
| that the vast majority of content and accounts are simply
| posting conservative content. Do you have evidence that
| "disgusting content" (whatever that means) is its "reason for
| existing"? That seems like a self-serving editorial conclusion
| rather than something borne out by hard evidence.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| PULLS SUPPORT ? What an odd way to say deny service. The BBC
| journalists went mad a few years ago and now that's what is left.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| Free market. You don't have to bake gay wedding cakes and we
| don't have to host terrorist content
| avl999 wrote:
| They'll survive being dropped by Amazon. What they most likely
| won't survive is if CloudFlare wants nothing to do with them.
| They are done if CloudFlare drops them.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| The rise of the Authoritarian left is upon. Brace for patriot act
| 2.0. Being banned from banking, flights, job opportunities, and
| society based on political association. Watch the crackdown as
| Biden is a deeply problematic and corrupt individual, that won an
| election that increasingly people will question as taxes are
| raised on the productive, and covid rules are used to justify
| taking away rights.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| if you don't want to be treated like a terrorist, you probably
| shouldn't fly to the nations capitol and storm congress.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Your hubris prevents them from seeing how abuses of power and
| petty acts of tyranny can backfire.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| "if you don't want your website shutdown for terrorism, you
| should probably moderate your site for terrorism" seems
| like a pretty clear and concise terms of use.
| DataSceince123 wrote:
| Why should people be able to say hateful ideas online? No one can
| answer this and its why we have to use censorship
| foobaw wrote:
| what about 4chan then?
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Amazon, fine. That's on Parler for running their stall out of the
| local mall. If the mall wants them out then so be it.
|
| If their registrar dropped them then that's far more pernicious.
| The Internet itself must be neutral.
| gnusty_gnurc wrote:
| Like what horrific stuff has been planned with gmail?
|
| Anyone use google to search for information used to do bad
| things?
|
| This is all incredibly focused, when the big players most
| certainly are rife with their own sins.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| One thing which concerns me a bit about this is that removing
| Parler removes a big chunk of evidence about how this was planned
| and who was involved.
|
| - Is this archived?
|
| - Does Law enforcement have access to that archive?
|
| Seems like once it's abundantly clear there is zero profit left
| in this the owners will abandon any link to the data and let it
| all rot and vanish. This strikes me as a lost opportunity.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| I'm for free speech, but Parler is demonstrably against it. The
| aggressively ban users for ideological reasons. That doesn't
| impact my feelings on speech and I support it without exception.
| What it does impact is how I prioritize Parler's issues. Groups
| other than the American right face far worse probabilities of
| being arrested and charged for frivolous reasons. I will worry
| about them first. I only have finite time and resources.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| This is troubling. I understand the 1st amendment argument, but
| isn't this more an anti-trust case? If a baker won't bake you a
| cake because you're gay there are dozens of other bakeries nearby
| that will, regardless of the merits or lackthereof of choosing
| not to bake a cake in that situation. If your service provider
| kicks you off their platform they've destroyed your entire
| business. I understand if they won't allow certain businesses to
| sign up, or if they give them a reasonable amount of time to
| transition to another provider, but revoking existing services
| with very little warning seems extreme.
| analog31 wrote:
| This is actually a widespread and common business situation. I
| used to work for a company that made a specialized component,
| and a customer called us up one day and said: "We have to knock
| 1 cent off the cost of your component, or WalMart will drop our
| brand from all of their stores." More broadly, a lot of
| businesses are at the mercy of a single big customer or
| supplier. Texas Instruments could discontinue the chip that I
| use in my product, sending my side business into a tailspin. I
| had to buy a lifetime supply of another part when it was slated
| for obsolescence.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Components are a bit different in that they are marketed as
| "obsolete for new designs", etc. and anyone making a physical
| product knows to plan for the eventuality that a supplier
| will be unreliable or that a part will be discontinued. This
| situation is not analogous since access to AWS is ongoing.
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, and I could have prepared myself for the situation
| in any number of ways, including monitoring my components
| status, designing around the dependency, and so forth. I
| think. Not all suppliers make it easy to discover the
| status of components.
|
| Do you think that a sole source relationship carries an
| implied contract of continued service? Should that be a
| regulation? I don't think I'd like that.
|
| As I understand it, AWS didn't force Parler to sole-source
| their computing infrastructure. And Parler claimed that
| they had prepared for such an eventuality.
|
| I don't know if it would apply to the current situation
| with Parler, as my understanding is that they did agree to
| terms of service, and that the dispute with AWS over their
| content moderation didn't come up all of a sudden.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I think it is reasonable to discontinue service if you
| don't like a customer.[0] But what if AWS's utility
| provider said we aren't going to power your datacenters
| because we like Parler? That seems wrong to me. I think
| it's reasonable to allow companies to terminate service
| but they should give a reasonable time frame (e.g. 3-6
| months) to migrate to a new platform.
|
| [0]: Certainly I think this in cases where you have a
| personal relationship with the customer/client, e.g. as a
| lawyer. It is less clear in the case where the service
| provided requires no real customer interaction as in AWS,
| where the services are all provided transparently, with
| no knowledge of who the customer is. But I don't want to
| get hung up on this issue.
| shakethemonkey wrote:
| In this case Amazon would likely apply pressure to the
| utility company's regulator, if such discretion was
| allowed to the monopoly provider under their current
| arrangements.
|
| That pressure would likely be successful.
|
| But even if a datacenter is removed from one
| jurisdiction, Amazon is perfectly able to handle that
| loss immediately.
| mech422 wrote:
| And if all the bakers in town refuse to bake you a cake, should
| you be able to force one to?
|
| Seriously, when there are dozens of options and none of them
| want your business, shouldn't that give you pause?
|
| If all the insurance agencies refuse to insure your ship
| because they think it will sink, wouldn't it be prudent to
| double check your blueprints/construction ?
| FeepingCreature wrote:
| > And if all the bakers in town refuse to bake you a cake,
| should you be able to force one to?
|
| Yes.
|
| edit: Well, they could also close all of their bakeries. I'm
| willing to allow them that option.
| hayd wrote:
| The same argument applies if you wanted to commission a
| cake celebrating the holocaust.
|
| The distinction must be that anyone (any race, any sexual
| orientation, etc. etc.) should be able to buy anything "off
| the shelf" (e.g. a plain cake or wedding cake). But no one
| should be forced to write/design/create something which
| they don't want to.
|
| My bakery should be allowed to refuse to bake a cake
| celebrating the holocaust.
| bhelkey wrote:
| In your opinion, should bakeries be allowed to refuse to
| make a custom wedding cake for the wedding of a gay
| couple? (e.g. Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil
| Rights Commission)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Col
| ora...
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| It's not that none of the other options want their business
| (though I have no doubt that Google and probably Microsoft
| would also exclude them). It's that you can't just switch
| platforms within days, while you could go order another cake
| since there's almost no time commitment to requesting a cake.
| DickingAround wrote:
| That is a mistake of getting a very ad-hoc contract and
| then doing something that creates a lot of risk of negative
| consequences (i.e. supporting the overthrow of a
| democracy).
|
| Honestly, this feels to me like just the best sort of stuff
| that private companies, and a world that relies on them
| does: Everyone likes but doesn't _need_ those services.
| There 's a lot of companies competing and the offering is
| great. If someone is such a pain in the butt that no one
| wants to do business with them, they have a hard time but
| still can if they want to go it alone and build it all
| themselves.
|
| These are light "highlights how well it works" stories to
| me.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| > i.e. supporting the overthrow of a democracy
|
| Do you have evidence that Parler was involved in the
| storming of the Capitol building? Glenn Greenwald says it
| was not involved.
|
| > Everyone likes but doesn't need those services
|
| Well the employees of the company sure need them if they
| want to pay their mortgages, buy food, etc.
| mech422 wrote:
| Given 70TB of parler data was leaked, I'm sure people can
| find out one way or another if they are so inclined.
| mech422 wrote:
| while that maybe true - it happens fairly often, usually
| with no warning at all. If anything, parler got
| preferential treatment by getting notice BEFORE getting
| terminated. Most just get "your account has been
| locked/terminated/etc" emails after the fact. There's
| bunches of horror stories on HN about it...
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I don't think the fact that it's happened to others has
| any bearing on its rightness or wrongness.
| whatsmyusername wrote:
| You're welcome to start your own ideologically compatible
| service provider. There are literally thousands of VPS
| hosts/cPanel farms/colo facilities/etc that they can do
| business out of that won't care (I know because I end up
| blocking a lot of them due to malicious traffic).
|
| You're not owed AWS's product and it's not required to build
| this kind of infrastructure. Sure it makes it easier, maybe try
| being less repugnant?
| kgwxd wrote:
| But there are a dozen other bakeries in this situation. None of
| which will bake them a cake. No bakery is going to make anyone
| a cyanide cake and no reasonable person would expect them to be
| legally required to do so.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| I doubt that is true. I'm sure some will take Parler's
| business. They just can't do it immediately because it's hard
| to switch from one platform to another.
| rgbrenner wrote:
| They don't allow companies like Perler to signup. What Perler
| used AWS for is prohibited by the TOS and AUP that Perler
| agreed to. It just took a while for AWS to notice and enforce
| the legal agreement that Perler agreed to abide by. Perler lied
| right from the beginning (because they had no intention of
| abiding by their agreement) to get AWS to provide service they
| would never have provided had Perler been honest from the
| start.
|
| Also the cake issue is different because discriminating based
| on sexual orientation was prohibited by the Colorado Anti-
| Discrimination Act. Colorado (the state I live in) has every
| right to pass laws to govern it's citizens. What happened to
| state's rights?
|
| To me these are very clear: You either believe contracts and
| laws can be enforced, or you don't.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Colorado lost the cake lawsuit. If anything that makes my
| claim stronger.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Colorado lost the cake lawsuit. If anything that makes my
| claim stronger.
|
| But not much (though not doing much to make it stronger is
| still not making it weaker), because it didn't lose it on
| the kinds of grounds people on either side wanted the case
| decided on for a decisive win, but because based on the
| details of the proceedings in his case the Court found
| specific animus against Phillips' religious views in the
| handling of the particular case by State officials.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Yes, that is true. Although as you hinted at, the Supreme
| Court didn't really want to rule on the issue that people
| were interested in (how to balance freedom of association
| with protected classes). They've punted on other
| similarly contentious issues as well (e.g. when NYC
| mooted a 2nd amendment case by changing its laws went the
| case when to the Supreme Court).
| zests wrote:
| In this world, service providers should create TOS that are
| as complicated as possible so that practically every company
| is violating them. The terms can then be applied "as needed".
| joshstrange wrote:
| You mean like the laws in this (US) country?
| Taikonerd wrote:
| I wonder if big corporations that sign deals with AWS in the
| future will write this into their contracts? ("Amazon agrees
| that, if they want to terminate our service for any reason,
| they will give us 6 months' notice so we can replatform our
| site.")
| finder83 wrote:
| Exactly, it's a 1st amendment issue because it's a monopoly (or
| mutual anti-competitive practices) issue. So you're entirely
| correct. If the big tech companies weren't engaging in anti-
| competitive practices, then the censoring would not be a big
| deal. But because there really is only one Facebook and little
| to no competition, and they're colluding in the same prejudice,
| then yes, it's a lack of freedom of speech.
|
| I'm all for the "they're a private company, they should do what
| they want" argument, if they (Twitter and Facebook) weren't the
| only nationally agreed upon means of communication and
| socializing during a nationwide lock-down.
| L_226 wrote:
| Serious question (not in the US), if "all" the content on Parler
| was inciting terrorism or what have you, why was it not simply
| subpoena'd by the relevant authority for user data? Isn't a site
| like this basically a honeypot for undesireables, and therefore a
| handy place for LE to round up all the people likely to commit
| violence? Or are there too many for LE, or is LE itself
| compromised and has members on the site?
| disposekinetics wrote:
| My observation is just a single observation, but after all the
| hubbub I created a Parler account and I saw a more milquetoast
| Twitter. It honestly reminded me of a country club in that it
| was mostly an older people version of Twitter.
| mariopt wrote:
| I would expect Amazon to be neutral and only make action if the
| government took legal action.
|
| This action is a threat to democracy on the behalf of private
| companies.
| sn_master wrote:
| If they're doing illegal things, an American court should decide
| that and shut them down with criminal charges. Otherwise, they
| shouldn't be shutdown. That's how it works in all democracies I
| know of.
|
| Where are US opposition groups supposed to host their content
| now? Russia or China, the same way groups in those countries host
| their content in the US?
| mozillalives wrote:
| All I'm going to say is that I'm all for free speech and setting
| fair rules for everyone to play by (ie regulation), but looking
| at the examples provided in the buzzfeed articles this is beyond
| simple free speech. I hear a lot of people saying this is just
| another example of the left trying to shut down free speech but
| there are clear threats being made on the platform. If Parler
| doesn't want to do any content regulation then fine (though this
| should be any easy place to draw the line), but I can't blame
| Amazon for saying "we don't want that here".
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| > the left trying to shut down free speech
|
| People really have no idea what the "left" even is anymore do
| they?
|
| I was once down voted here for mentioning that the NYTimes is
| _not_ an extreme left wing publication. The NYTimes is a
| centrist liberal publication that is widely reviled by anyone
| on the left.
|
| It's amazing to me that the media (not just Fox-news and co)
| has constructed this bizarre bogey-man of the left as some
| control hungry liberals. Those people certainly exist, but they
| aren't, by anyone who is engage in leftist politics and theory,
| remotely left.
|
| Believe it or not people on the left have been critical of the
| growing role that corporations have in setting public policy
| for decades. Sure, centrist liberals my be cheering, but nobody
| on the left wants to see corporations be the unchecked
| regulators of society.
|
| However, equally surprising to me, is the number of pro-big
| tech company HN people who are suddenly deeply concerned about
| unchecked corporate power. People who two weeks ago would claim
| that companies should drive out employees who disagree with
| them, now wish these companies were subject to the will of the
| people. You can't spend a lifetime fighting to reduce the power
| of the federal government and then be surprised at all that
| large corporations are the ones deciding our public policy.
|
| The entire fact that the will of the people has no direct power
| over corporate action is exactly why the left doesn't like the
| perpetual growth of corporate power and of its deregulation.
|
| The unfortunate conclusion of all this confusion for me is that
| this is clearly not political in the slightest. Right-wingers
| (conservatives haven't existed for decades now) aren't
| _political_ because they don 't have a value system at all.
| It's just confused rage at a world they don't understand and
| they feel is crushing them.
| kkoncevicius wrote:
| At least in the mainstream right wingers are the left wingers
| of yesterday. Two good examples are how free-speech and free-
| markets are considered right wing today.
| malwrar wrote:
| > However, equally surprising to me, is the number of pro-big
| tech company HN people who are suddenly deeply concerned
| about unchecked corporate power.
|
| I think its because the ideal vision of people who like
| minimal regulation is that they don't really think of mega-
| rich monoliths that have a direct impact on how an entire
| country chooses to consume its information. At least for me,
| I was one one of the annoying "but they're a private
| business" people until my optics shifted from viewing the
| issue as someone with an entrepreneurial mindset to someone
| who sees power concentrating and now being flexed by a small
| collection of mega-rich monolithic advertising companies that
| also happen to be collected in the same geopolitical region
| and possibly have an ideological bias.
|
| In other words I reconsidered my principles in light of new
| information--my posting history here even shows this
| evolution. FAATG's decisions about how to handle what
| happened at the Capitol have actually scared the hell out of
| me, even more so than if the
| protesters/rioters/insurrectionists had actually succeeded in
| doing any of the wild shit people keep saying they intended
| to do. Those companies collectively own the most effective
| ways to communicate with others as well as almost complete
| control on the supply chain to create new competitors. I
| don't want to live in a world where that power exists in the
| hands of anyone, especially one that is willing to take
| political action and whose executives and employees vote and
| donate for one party.
|
| > Right-wingers (conservatives haven't existed for decades
| now) aren't political because they don't have a value system
| at all. It's just confused rage at a world they don't
| understand and they feel is crushing them.
|
| In the same post you lament people not knowing what the
| "left" is, you dismiss the right entirely as being comprised
| of nothing but valueless curmudgeons. This isn't meant to be
| a personal attack, I just want to point out the bias here in
| a fairly lazy jab at at least half the US since I've seen it
| a lot here the last few days. The right (and conservatives)
| do actually have a more coherent ideological standpoints than
| you assert, and I suggest digging into what they're saying.
| It'll be important now more than ever as we in Big Tech
| figure out how to deal with the massive class of people we've
| just alienated.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| > However, equally surprising to me, is the number of pro-big
| tech company HN people who are suddenly deeply concerned
| about unchecked corporate power. People who two weeks ago
| would claim that companies should drive out employees who
| disagree with them, now wish these companies were subject to
| the will of the people. You can't spend a lifetime fighting
| to reduce the power of the federal government and then be
| surprised at all that large corporations are the ones
| deciding our public policy.
|
| I wouldn't say these are in conflict. The biggest reason I
| oppose political movement in SV corporations is because I
| believe they'd become _even more_ censorious than they are
| now. Today 's corporations are evil to make money and protect
| their brand, but I don't want tomorrow's corporations to be
| evil for a political ideology.
| 8ytecoder wrote:
| That's exactly I found Elon Musk's and Sam's tweets
| disappointing. There are very few free speech absolutists who
| support violence. This is not a case of whether we need
| moderation or not but rather "was this the right level of
| moderation". I can't really blame Twitter or even AWS for it.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1348688644173934593
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/sama/status/1348699888209461249
| starkd wrote:
| But the prospect of a few powerful tech companies putting their
| competitors out of business should concern everyone. And
| there's no reason for such harsh measures.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Amazon taking down Parler is some dirty business. The fact that
| we might be ok with that, pragmatically, doesn't detract from
| it being, at best, a morally dubious action.
|
| In a state that protects speech, one shouldn't stand by when
| default-web-megacorp does the censorship dirty work on our
| behalf.
|
| Or maybe we do. If this is a once in a generation aberration
| then it can slide. Time will tell.
| abarringer wrote:
| oh com'n. As if twitter doesn't allow people to post stupid
| junk? Multiple accounts that posted "Kill all white women"
| "Today seems like a good day for another reminder that all
| republicans deserve to die" are still active along with plenty
| of other insane things. You can cherry pick bad stuff from any
| social media site.
| narcissismo wrote:
| It seems like you can see it all now, rather than having to
| cherry pick.
|
| https://cybernews.com/news/70tb-of-parler-users-messages-
| vid...
|
| I'd be interested in seeing the hate ratio between 70TB of
| that site's posts versus an equivalent volume of Twitter
| traffic.
| creatorbytes wrote:
| But that puts the burden on who defines hate. Similar to
| the issue with banning "hate speech". Where's the line?
|
| We know the extremes, but the extremes aren't the problem.
|
| "Basketball is stupid" - hate speech targeting a minority
| demographic, thereby racist.
|
| I wish the above was hyperbole, but there's a non-zero
| group size of people in nearby college communities that
| would agree.
| amyjess wrote:
| A friend of mine got permanently suspended from twitter
| because she and a friend were bantering with each other and
| she made a joking threat. Her friend who the "threat" was
| directed at has tried to petition twitter to undo her
| suspension, but they've just ignored her.
|
| Twitter regularly bans people for anything that smells of
| violence, even when the "threat" is one person joking with
| their friend.
| mistersquid wrote:
| > Her friend who the "threat" was directed at has tried to
| petition twitter to undo her suspension, but they've just
| ignored her.
|
| Can you quote the specific threat issued, anonymized as
| appropriate?
| arbitrage wrote:
| ... that's not a counter argument, you realize that, right?
| Saying things like that shouldn't be sanctioned on twitter,
| either.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Twitter puts an active effort into removing those posts. You
| can definitely make the case they don't go far enough, but
| Parler did the bare minimum. You would have to cherry pick
| the reasonable content off that site.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Several tweets like this one from Khamenei are still up:
| https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1263551872872386562
|
| Is "The only remedy until the removal of the Zionist regime
| is firm, armed resistance." not a call to violence?
|
| If Trump had posted the same Tweet do you think Twitter
| would have removed it?
| Karunamon wrote:
| _Mea culpa: I had the completely wrong idea on this post.
| See down thread. I would delete this comment if I could._
|
| Is that why "Hang Mike Pence" was allowed to trend with 14K
| tweets, and later that same day "Hang Pence" with 55K?[1]
|
| I'd wager every penny I own that almost none of those
| people were banned or sanctioned in any way.
|
| [1]: https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1347791913806532609
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| And then Twitter removed it. Could have been faster
| definitely, but Parler would have never taken it down at
| all.
| jmull wrote:
| That argument doesn't hold water.
|
| "Hang Mike Pence", as has been noted many times, was
| trending because people were discussing the videos
| showing Trump rioters chanting that.
|
| People were not banned for using that phrase for the same
| reason you and I are not going to be banned/flagged for
| using it here: we aren't calling for violence and murder.
|
| edit: previously called this a bad-faith argument, but
| that's not fair.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _as has been noted many times_
|
| A big problem on social networks (including right here on
| HN) is that it's very easy for people to behave
| disingenuously and ask questions to which they already
| know the answer.It's a very effective wayt o either
| spread misinformation or steal the time of people who are
| concerned about misinformation, because it's much cheaper
| to repeat a BS allegation than it is to debunk it.
|
| Another problem (more peculiar but not unique to HN) is
| that calling out such behavior is often regarded as
| uncivil. To my mind disingenuity is far more uncivil; I
| prefer a rude truth to a polite lie.
| dagmx wrote:
| It was brought about because the insurrectionists were
| shouting that after posts on Parler called for it.
| Twitter then moderated and banned it.
|
| You're really cutting out a ton of context here to fit a
| narrative. Parler was the source of the posts and parler
| would not moderate it.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| Not only did twitter end up removing it, but it was a
| hashtag in response to a video from the protests of
| people yelling "Hang Mike Pence", primarily not people
| actually calling for Mike Pence to be hanged. That I keep
| seeing this example being thrown around from conservative
| sources shows either a desire to argue in bad faith or a
| complete inability to research things beyond the absolute
| surface level. And it's not like there aren't other
| examples one could use to make reasonable complaints
| about censorship bias on twitter.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Did they actively remove it, or did it just age out of
| trending like everything does after a relatively short
| amount of time?
| debaserab2 wrote:
| Shouldn't you be the one researching the argument you're
| supporting?
| Karunamon wrote:
| I wasn't the one that made the claim it was actively
| removed.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| debaserab2 wrote:
| Come on, you threw out a baseless claim that didn't even
| survive a superficial level of scrutiny. Now you're just
| moving goal posts.
| Karunamon wrote:
| In fairness, I don't have a habit of applying tight
| scrutiny to things that appear, on their face, to be
| blatant calls to violence. It's usually self-evident by
| reading the words.
|
| Twitter's actions aren't even self-consistent here. If
| these tweets were all innocuous, then why remove the
| trend? If they were primarily discussions of other
| people's activity, rather than explicit calls for
| violence, then there was no good reason to do this.
|
| Also, there's nothing "moving goal posts" about asking
| people to at least try to substantiate what they post.
| The person I responded to didn't even bother posting a
| link.
| danso wrote:
| How many of those tweets were users commenting on news
| reports that the rioters were chanting "Hang Mike Pence"?
| https://twitter.com/search?q=hang%20mike%20pence&src=type
| d_q...
| MikeKusold wrote:
| If people are required to upload official identification
| before posting, why would you not want this site up? It
| seems like a low-effort honeypot by the FBI. Let all the
| radicalized people come, easily tie their online & offline
| identities together, then monitor them.
| tantalor wrote:
| The difference is some sites (Twitter) have policy and
| infrastructure for moderating spam/abuse, and some (Parler)
| do not.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| According to Parler's CEO the easiest way to get banned is
| by posting "fuck you" or uploading pictures of poop. That
| is what he is focused on...
|
| Source is Kara Swisher's interview with John Matze.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Those two examples are likely rhetorical and are (as far as I
| can tell) not intended to and extremely unlikely to incite
| violence, much less imminent violence. If there were,
| however, organized groups actually planning and carrying out
| killings, and those groups used those slogans as a rallying
| cry, then indeed people and groups distributing those slogans
| ought to be banned from social networks.
| metiscus wrote:
| Are these platforms prohibited from removing unionization and
| strike organization activities? My fear is that the labor
| movement (which is just starting to make significant headway in
| some of these companies) will be the next targets. If the
| companies do not have to pay to host hateful content, are there
| legal protections for labor which may be seen as the next major
| threat by these companies?
| grahamburger wrote:
| The main thing I'm afraid of is that there will be a renewed
| push to make encryption illegal. Optimistically, I think the
| actions of these tech companies might help avoid that - if they
| had done nothing, it would be easier for politicians to demand
| the ability to take matters in to their own hands.
| munificent wrote:
| _> I hear a lot of people saying this is just another example
| of the left trying to shut down free speech_
|
| This is a specious argument on its face. The First Amendment
| does not say that private companies are obligated to spend
| money broadcasting someone else's speech. Hosting and serving
| isn't free and any private company has the freedom to decide
| what not to host.
|
| If an author's content is so toxic that advertisers won't be
| associated with it and thus hosts can't or won't afford to host
| it, that's on the author.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| I don't think the people that end up on Parler have a strong
| grasp of constitutional law (no offense to anyone that does
| and uses app).
|
| The general people that end up on that app are hardcore
| trending extremist and you're not going to find intelligent
| debate on the role of private companies and the government.
| It's probably closer to propaganda than it is a true social
| media site.
| trident5000 wrote:
| There are plenty of extremists on Twitter and Facebook.
| Thats where the double standard is. People organized on
| twitter when they stormed the white house and the pres went
| into a bunker as an example. Facebook is accused of much
| worse in foreign countries currently.
|
| The reason Parler was banned is because all these
| corporations are very aware they are under the anti-trust
| microscope. This was a favor to the new party in power in
| hopes of getting something back.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| While I absolutely agree with the idea that every social
| media has extremes, I completely disagree with the end
| conclusions.
|
| Other social media services do not actively shape the
| debate through intense political moderation. There's no
| "Post tsar" the validates the political health of things
| that people host.
|
| Meanwhile on Parler...
|
| https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1347939939120533506
|
| https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1346565749977051136
|
| It's literally, a far right wing propaganda machine and
| any other interpretation of this is misinformed.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Sounds like hyperbole to me. Again we can flip this to
| "twitter is a left wing extremist platform" quite easily
| by finding the right tweet snapshots and pointing to
| prior events. And nobody knows the exact algos or
| moderation mechanisms for any of the platforms, the
| screenshots you linked say essentially nothing even with
| whoever that person is narrating. Im not saying hes
| wrong, but I'm certainly not taking it at face value. On
| other platforms there are similar reward systems. Blue
| check-marks for instance, and shadow banning is obviously
| a thing.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| I don't think the argument isn't that other platforms
| don't have things like "verified" and "shadowbanned".
| It's the connotations attached to them. On Twitter, just
| about anyone can get verified. Shadowbanning requires a
| serious fuck up (for example, Trump was only banned
| _after_ inciting a riot).
|
| Seems that Parler has taken a very different approach.
| Attaching political goals and ideology to the business
| model of a social network.
|
| Pretty good write up here:
| https://www.wired.com/story/parler-app-free-speech-
| influence...
| a_band wrote:
| Absolutely, we all know that Twitter and Facebook have
| been far greater vehicles for the political unrest that's
| been growing for the last four years. Parler is a
| convenient scapegoat.
| emtel wrote:
| Free speech and the First Amendment are not the same thing.
|
| Free speech is a moral principle/ideal that exists
| independently of the US Constitution.
|
| The First Amendment guarantees a certain form of free speech
| in the United States.
|
| Private-sector censorship / restriction of speech is not in
| violation of the First Amendment. However, it may still
| amount to a restriction on free speech.
| munificent wrote:
| Fair, but in this case we're talking about a US company
| hosting another US company's data, so I think talking about
| free speech in the context of the First Amendment is
| reasonable.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The distinction between private and public sphere is not
| completely clear.
|
| Let us say that a politician calls Mark Zuckerberg and
| asks him nicely to squish certain people, and MZ
| complies. Is that a First Amendment issue or not?
|
| Or, let us say that a politician calls Mark Zuckerberg
| and offers him some concrete support (in an anti-trust
| case or taxation matters) for squishing certain people,
| and MZ takes up the offer. Is that a First Amendment
| issue or not?
|
| The trouble with both scenarios is that they are
| certainly possible and hard to prove or disprove. That is
| one of the reasons why concentration of power in a few
| hands (even private ones) may translate into bad
| politics.
| emtel wrote:
| It's not unreasonable, but I think it's incomplete. We
| may be headed towards a world in which private companies
| exert a great deal of control over what an individual can
| say. Not only by controlling communication platforms, but
| also by withholding employment from people who say
| certain things.
|
| I don't want to join the argument about whether that's
| good or bad, but I think it's a huge mistake to simply
| say "It's consistent with the 1st amendment, therefore
| it's OK." If we're going to let private corporations use
| their market power to police individual speech, we need
| to have a real debate about what that means.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| When the government is threatening regulation against the
| private-sector because these companies don't censor, then I
| think this could potentially be considered a 1st amendment
| issue.
| staunch wrote:
| Every private company in the U.S. is compelled by law to
| offer goods and services regardless of race, religion, etc.
|
| Adding political affiliation to the list of protected classes
| probably makes sense. It seems odd that it's not on the list,
| doesn't it?
|
| The bans we're seeing here are very clearly political. Parler
| is not breaking laws. It seems obvious that if Parler was
| being used by BLM to organize violent riots they would not
| get banned.
|
| As usual, one person's terrorist is another's freedom
| fighter. Anyone simplifying this whole thing into good vs bad
| is behaving like a member of a tribal mob.
|
| One thing that is certain is that private companies should
| not be the ones deciding these major cultural issues. The
| Supreme Court should resolve these issues.
| [deleted]
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| > Hosting and serving isn't free
|
| What a pathetic excuse. It's not like Amazon was hosting
| parler for free.
| listenallyall wrote:
| The First Amendment, obviously, doesn't address TV or the
| internet but your statement "any private company has the
| freedom to decide what not to host" is false, television
| stations must adhere to the "equal time doctrine" and allot
| broadcasting time (the equivalent of hosting) to political
| candidates regardless of party affiliation or agenda. We also
| had a "fairness doctrine", the reinstatement of which had the
| support of many of today's prominent Democratic leaders
| (Pelosi, Durbin, Kerry).
|
| Point is, the government has, multiple times, recognized the
| power of "big media" to suppress political speech, and acted
| to regulate that power.
| aftbit wrote:
| >> free speech
|
| > First Amendment
|
| These things are different. First Amendment protections
| restrict the US government from censoring protected speech.
| Free speech is a broader concept that covers any restrictions
| upon speech, including restrictions that are legal in the US.
|
| It seems that the right to free speech must be balanced
| against the harms that speech can cause, but I am tired of
| this meme that just because they're a private company, AWS et
| al should be able to block whatever they like. These tech
| companies have more power and knowledge than many governments
| of the previous century. We should be cautious advocating for
| a totally hands-off policy on how they use that power.
| disantlor wrote:
| are you not just highlighting the fact that there is a
| First Amendment right but _not_ a broader "free speech"
| right, which is the very point people are trying to make.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| As far as posting online, people aren't allowed to post child
| porn - anywhere. You don't get to complain about your free
| speech, or about hosting companies not hosting your child
| porn.
|
| In this case, it looks like they also don't want to host your
| death threats.
|
| There was no line to begin with. Nothing was crossed. This
| isn't anything new.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| But since this action appears coordinated across major
| platforms and likely in response to political pressure from
| the now in power Democratic party (Amazon is being paid for
| hosting, so no advertisers fleeing issue), I think there now
| may be a real first amendment issue.
| Closi wrote:
| > This is a specious argument on its face. The First
| Amendment does not say that private companies are obligated
| to spend money broadcasting someone else's speech. Hosting
| and serving isn't free and any private company has the
| freedom to decide what not to host.
|
| I'm in the UK, but the difference is that right now, these
| private companies control communication.
|
| I'm not allowed outside my house and I live alone. I'm not
| even allowed outside to go and talk to friends - people are
| getting fined and arrested for just sitting on a park bench
| because of the latest lockdown. All my communication with
| everyone I know is done via private companies. If they lock
| me out, I'm totally screwed. What is free speech if I can't
| talk to anyone? Are the phone companies allowed to lock me
| out if they don't like what I'm saying?
|
| So one could argue, that actually if we want free speech in
| the 21st century, and want to honour the intent of what it
| means to have free speech, there does need to be some
| protection here.
|
| The protections around freedom of speech were put in at a
| time where it was inconceivable that a huge majority of
| worldwide speech could be mass-monitored and auto-censored by
| a few giant private companies that self-police what can and
| can't be said - and I think the legislators would have been
| horrified!
| mgkimsal wrote:
| > Are the phone companies allowed to lock me out if they
| don't like what I'm saying?
|
| Possibly, although... you're paying for your phone service.
| You're not paying for parler, facebook, twitter, etc.
| Closi wrote:
| Parler were paying for AWS.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| > censored by a few giant private companies that self-
| police what can and can't be said
|
| But you have to keep in mind the other side of that - the
| protections around freedom of speech were put in place at a
| time when it was inconceivable that a majority of people in
| the country had the ability to be seen and heard _by the
| majority of other people in the country_. In near real-
| time, anytime. And that they could do so in a way that
| meant often they did not have to accept any consequence for
| the wider-ranging effects of their words.
|
| Separately I also have to wonder if the knowledge acquired
| as a result of that would have affected their framing. In
| particular the advances in psychology and group psychology,
| and in understanding how it's possible to use this instant
| mass communication to manipulate even people who are on
| guard against manipulation.
| epistasis wrote:
| If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech,
| it's the _same_ sort of speech that would have gotten you
| shut down in the public square.
|
| Have they shut down text messaging, phone calls, group
| messaging, all the encrypted messaging apps?
|
| Do the tech companies control postal mail, letters to the
| editor, and printing presses?
|
| Of course not. You are looking for others to give you a
| platform to reach a wide audience. There are _many_. But no
| platform requires people to publish you. You have lost
| being able to yell in a public square, temporarily, due to
| public safety, but you haven 't lost the ability to
| transmit speech that would have been acceptable in the
| public square.
|
| So so so tired of these false equivalencies, and an
| unwillingness to engage with the _type_ of speech that
| results in this. Normal, political speech is just fine.
| Incitement to violence, no.
|
| Hell, AWS still hosts the publication that posted Bezos'
| dick pics! These shutdowns are not some sort of political
| censorship, these shutdowns are the natural result of
| speech that societies have determined _not_ to be free.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >If these companies are "shutting you down" for your
| speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have
| gotten you shut down in the public square.
|
| That's completely absurd. Tens of thousands of people are
| silenced by corporations every day for speech that is
| considered offensive by one metric or another, but is by
| no means illegal. An associate of mine was permanently
| banned for, "deadnaming" someone else. Certainly very
| offensive according certain standards but hardly
| something that you wouldn't be allowed to say in the
| public park.
|
| You can reasonably argue about the right of private
| corporations to choose to do business with who they want,
| but you cannot reasonably argue that people are only
| being silenced for explicitly illegal behavior that would
| also be illegal offline.
| [deleted]
| epistasis wrote:
| There's two different sorts of "you" here. There's the
| big platform of "you" that AWS shut down, that was shut
| down for the not-allowed-in-public-sphere speech.
|
| Then there are the "you"s that are posting on individual
| platforms that get to choose their own standards of
| conduct. AWS stopped business with a platform that would
| not be allowed in the public square.
|
| An individual that got banned for dead naming can just
| start another account anonymously, as far as I know.
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| The delusion and mania gripping the country is evident by
| the downvotes to the above post. It is beyond dispute
| that the standards used by tech companies to silence
| people go far beyond speech that violates the law.
| Reading the TOS of any of these tech companies will
| confirm this. Its rather astounding that otherwise
| intelligent and presumably literate people are so jarred
| by this statement of indisputable fact. Unfortunately its
| impossible to have a thoughtful, reasoned discussion
| about the free speech issues raised by recent events when
| so many are living in denial of reality.
| vkou wrote:
| If I get banned from HN for violating it's ToS (By, say,
| personally attacking people, or posting links to
| pornography, or just engaging in insane off-topic
| ramblings), can I also describe that as being silenced
| for my beliefs? Despite retaining access to hundreds of
| unmoderated channels by which I can communicate?
| StanislavPetrov wrote:
| >If I get banned from HN for violating it's ToS (By, say,
| personally attacking people, or posting links to
| pornography, or just engaging in insane off-topic
| ramblings), can I also describe that as being silenced
| for my beliefs?
|
| That's completely unrelated to the issue at hand -
| whether or not you'd be able to ramble insanely or make
| personal attacks in a public park (you would).
| [deleted]
| junon wrote:
| > If these companies are "shutting you down" for your
| speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have
| gotten you shut down in the public square.
|
| That's some Grade A corporate apologetics there. How can
| you assert this? Who decides what is going to get you
| "shut down in the public square"?
| epistasis wrote:
| Who determines what speech gets shut down in the public
| square? In the US, it's a mixture of courts and
| legislation setting laws and their interpretations,
| lawsuits establishing damages for certain types of
| speech, and then of course cops on the ground making
| individual decisions on a case by case basis and using
| violence or threat of violence to arrest people.
|
| I am not sure how any of this is apologizing for
| corporations instead of any other aspect of our system
| though...
|
| Edit: For the lawsuit aspect of shutting down speech,
| check out this very topical lawsuit: https://www.washingt
| onpost.com/politics/2021/01/11/cybersecu...
|
| Even if this particular suit fails, I hope that it
| demonstrates that there are entire bodies of law set up
| to silence some forms of speech.
| unholiness wrote:
| > Normal, political speech is just fine. Incitement to
| violence, no
|
| Right. Even the Post Office is not required to deliver
| pipe bombs.
|
| The issue is that right now, that's not the standard.
| Amazon /hasn't/ taken down sites in the name of political
| censorship, but it /could/. The implications of that are
| important, and they're why I find it hard to be satisfied
| with justifications like "Amazon is a private company,
| they can do what they want".
| epistasis wrote:
| Right now, the US military could side with Trump, launch
| a fascist coup, start rounding up enemy politicians for
| assassination, and eliminate any freedom at all for
| anybody who doesn't who enough MAGA support publicly.
| They haven't, but they could, and it's happened
| frequently enough in other countries.
|
| Not only is this scenario 1000x worse for freedom than
| the _very very_ worst that Amazon could do, it 's also
| far more likely at the moment.
|
| So my question is, why the F are we even _talking_ about
| Amazon? Because it 's just a BS distraction from the
| elephant in the room.
|
| It's time to stop engaging with sophistry and fight back
| the fascists that are trying to take away _all_ our
| freedoms. And this big fear of big tech is exactly the
| type of distraction that lets fascism flourish enough to
| gain a stronghold.
| happythomist wrote:
| > Not only is this scenario 1000x worse for freedom than
| the very very worst that Amazon could do, it's also far
| more likely at the moment.
|
| Politically motivated refusal of service by Amazon or
| other Silicon Valley firms is at least an order of
| magnitude more likely than _any_ coup by the US military,
| much less a Trumpist one.
| lovecg wrote:
| I'm curious what was your estimate of the likelihood of
| what happened last Wednesday before it happened? Were
| your priors updated in any way since then?
| NateEag wrote:
| I can't speak for OP, but long before the election, I was
| expecting violence around the US if Trump lost.
|
| I didn't predict an attack on the Capitol, but it didn't
| really surprise me, either.
|
| I speak as a conservative who is aggressively anti-Trump
| but believes many of his voters would not condone what
| happened at the Capitol.
| happythomist wrote:
| That's basically my thinking as well, for what it's
| worth.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Many may not support it, but nearly half do including
| many elected Republican politicians. This isn't a fringe
| Trump supporter issue, but a major issue within the
| Republican party and with American conservatism in
| general. Maybe the perception of conservatives being
| censored is just a reflection of the reality that they
| support using violence to obtain their goals at much,
| much higher rates than liberals do and are just suffering
| the consequences of their actions?
|
| https://www.statista.com/chart/23886/capitol-riot-
| approval/
| epistasis wrote:
| Preposterous, the ranks of Q anon and MAGA are filled
| with ex-military and law enforcement. They flashed their
| badges at the Capitol police force! We are that close!
|
| Meanwhile, this political shutdown is pure theory, a
| straw man floated to distract us from the violence that
| seethes on the platforms used to organize a fascist
| overthrow of the government.
|
| But even if we take your probability assessment, the
| damage times the probability places a violent military
| coup as a HUGE problem compared to Amazon stopping
| business with someone.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Wow, maybe all that "defund the police" stuff was right?
| blitz_skull wrote:
| I'm pretty sure violent rhetoric is an entire ocean apart
| from mailing literal bombs..
|
| Or are we still on that "words are violence" thing? I
| can't keep up.
| tsm_sf wrote:
| This is what everyone decided they wanted twenty years
| ago. Loss of public space was a huge topic of
| conversation, and the end consensus (IMHO) was that the
| internet itself was the public space and everyone was
| free to make something.
|
| From that perspective this looks like a conversation
| about ease of access rather than free speech. Amazon's
| the only way to build something on Amazon, but nothing's
| stopping me from creating something myself.
|
| I don't see being able to buy eyeballs on the cheap as a
| fundamental right. If you care enough, build it. If
| others care, they'll come.
| plutonorm wrote:
| All well and good. But say for instance you lived in nazi
| Germany, would you have the right to protest? Would you
| have the right to say things that are outside of the
| overton window? You would not have the right, and your
| opinions would be spat upon. And yet they would be true
| and right for you. In your mind you would have every
| right to express yourself and undermine the government
| outside of democratic means.
|
| The point is we can never know how far outside of what is
| "good" we currently circle. It is right that people with
| a belief strong enough to force them to action are forced
| to action. It is right that a state that believes itself
| true defends itself. It is all part of the process, all
| of it. Who the hell are you to know with certainty that
| you, specifically you, have the the eagle eyed vision to
| discern right from wrong? To somehow miraculously step
| outside of the tiny little context in which you live and
| know with 100% certainty that you are right.
|
| You are the product of your surroundings, a container for
| thoughts passing through, a ghost in the machine. Don't
| be so God damned arrogant. You cannot know truth, you
| cannot know right. The world is unfolding as it should.
| epistasis wrote:
| Oh come on, this is a not very old debate, and within
| living memory of many of us we actually had to fight
| against the Nazis and then determine how best to prevent
| fascism from taking hold. This is the basic debate about
| government. This is why any technologist who hopes to
| influence the world should read deeply of history and the
| prior debates along these same lines.
|
| The clearest guideline that I have seen is the Paradox of
| Tolerance, where we must stop some speech in order to
| make room for as many as possible. Fascists hate this,
| because fascists are the ones who demand total and
| perfect freedom to act and speak as the wish, up to the
| point of being allowed to perform violence on those whose
| speech they don't like. Which is why the fascists were
| chanting "Hang Pence" as they stormed the capitol.
|
| Don't you dare try to accuse me of being arrogant for
| judging fascists, and don't you dare accuse me of trying
| to be the ultimate arbiter of good and evil. I can name
| fascists as unacceptable to society without being an
| ultimate arbiter.
|
| We are in dangerous waters in the US, and all our words
| mean something right now. Will we fall for the lies of
| the fascists who say "let us violate all social norms
| with our speech, and we promise we woke take over with
| violence than force you to follow our norms with
| violence," or will we stand up to them and enable as open
| a society as we can?
| plutonorm wrote:
| So the slave holders who were all adamant that owning
| slaves was cool, they were totally right to not question
| their own views? They believed they were right. You
| believe you are right. Create a logical argument for me
| describing how you just _know_ you are right.
| epistasis wrote:
| You seem to be asking me to jump through some hoops to
| distinguish what I posted from justification of slavery.
| Also, as best as I can guess, you are advocating for
| nihilism.
|
| How "logical" is it to say that because I have some
| values, they are indistinguishable from justifying
| slavery?
|
| This sort of "there is no truth or good or bad" is
| exactly the sort of reasoning that's used to brainwash
| people into supporting _anything and everything_. Because
| once there 's nothing true, there's nothing false.
|
| If somebody is feeding you this line of reasoning, or
| some group, or some forum, I would recommend trying to
| reconnect with mainstream human thought and value of
| human life for a bit, and see if the nihilism still seems
| logical. Try to read a mainstream history of the
| Nuremberg trials, for example. Or read a book about the
| Reconstruction and the oppression that happened even
| after slavery was abolished.
| plutonorm wrote:
| I've held a position of cautious moral relativism since
| my early teens because I think carefully and try not to
| be reactive.
| [deleted]
| 8note wrote:
| You can send a letter in the mail, can't you?
| Closi wrote:
| Oh great, that totally resolves the dystopian nightmare
| we might be heading for!
| scsilver wrote:
| I mean, the UK is still has vestigial Monarchal
| components as opposed to the US constitution which was
| built from the ground up with severe limits and
| federation of power. We'd likely see that distopia in
| england long before the US justice system can adjust
| itself to allow it.
| [deleted]
| crazydoggers wrote:
| The difference with the phone companies is you're talking
| one on one communication. Not a publishing platform which
| is what these social media services really are. You can
| always use text, signal, etc if you want to communicate
| with your group.
|
| These are the same kinds of issues society dealt with, with
| the advent of radio and television, platforms that allowed
| small groups to reach out to very large groups of people
| with minimal effort.
|
| Most countries have something like the FCC that regulates
| those platforms. Not only is it not permitted to incite
| violence in tv, even gross displays of real violence are
| censored, and even offensive speech. (For instance
| swearing).
|
| Now we can have debates about the degree of that
| censorship, but the topics of free speech and first
| amendment rights have largely been settled.
|
| If companies don't self censor stuff that clearly 99% of
| society doesn't like, then you're going to see someone like
| the FCC or other government agencies step in. So what would
| you rather.
|
| If someone like Parler or Gab wants to exists, they are
| free to at the moment, and they are also free to speak
| anything they want to whom ever they want. They just don't
| get to force other people to support them in the process.
|
| Coming from a family who's relatives escaped from places
| which had true censorship, lack of any first amendment
| rights, the entitlement, and disconnect from reality in
| these arguments bothers me.
|
| You do not have a protected right to a mass publication
| forum. That is not a first amendment right. You do have the
| right to establish such a platform if you wish to. But just
| like you had to buy you're own printing press, you'll have
| to buy your own internet infrastructure. And I and other
| groups of citizens (including companies made up of those
| citizens) also have a right not to listen to you and to
| throw your pamphlets in the trash.
|
| And as a society, we have a right to limit free speech when
| it is very clearly only about hate and violence. You don't
| get to call my house and tell me you'll kill me for
| instance.
|
| " Under state criminal codes, which vary by state, it is an
| offense to knowingly utter or convey a threat to cause
| death or bodily harm to any person. It is also an offense
| to threaten to burn, destroy or damage property or threaten
| to kill, poison or injure an animal or bird that belongs to
| a person."
| a_band wrote:
| > You can always use text, signal, etc if you want to
| communicate with your group.
|
| Does Signal run on AWS? If I can shut you down at the
| cloud level then I'm not sure these options will be
| available in the future. Someone is going to coordinate a
| protest/riot on Signal, screenshots will leak, then what
| happens?
| crazydoggers wrote:
| Well Signal is free and open source. So feel free to boot
| up some servers on any other platform, or your own
| hosting and run it from there. Maybe signal the
| foundation needs to pay more or move platforms to support
| the app and make it easy to install, but again, why would
| or should AWS, Google, Apple be forced to host them?
| Don't those companies have a first amendment right to
| block speech they don't like?
|
| It's like walking into the mall or public place, and
| saying, "You have to broadcast this message to everyone
| because 'freedom of speech'"".
|
| In fact it's better to assume that private companies have
| such ability anywhere in the world. Signal fosters more
| access to defy censorship precisely because it realizes
| that. Making the software open source is how you allow
| people who need such tools to have them available.
|
| And honestly... you've got the airwaves. It's called
| radio. Shortwave, can reach halfway around the world.
|
| Again, the entitlement to these services astounds me. The
| internet didn't exist 40 years ago.... and now somehow
| the ability to assault people with misinformation,
| provide unfettered access for propaganda from state
| actors, permit the dissemination of hate speech is being
| called a right??
|
| It makes no sense, and is completely devoid of historical
| perspective.
| a_band wrote:
| Like it or not private companies currently have a
| monopoly on the communication infrastructure of our
| planet. There is no "public option" for AWS. If they have
| a monopoly (which Apple and Google clearly have on the
| app store), then it comes with specific obligations to
| not discriminate and a requirement to provide services to
| everyone equally. That's the price you pay for banning
| competition from the market.
|
| If Apple and Google allowed alternative app stores in
| their ecosystem, then there would be no problem with them
| kicking off any apps for any reason under the sun.
|
| The argument is more nuanced for AWS as there are viable
| competitors. However, it is stunning that they would
| cancel their contract with a customer by giving them only
| 24 hours notice. It's making me seriously consider why I
| would trust AWS as a partner.
| randyrand wrote:
| Consider this - If the conservative farmers and distributers
| individually decided not serve the bay area anyone, they are
| well within their rights.
|
| Political ideology is not protected, regardless of how
| important you perceive basic accommodations like shelter,
| food, or communication are.
| gameman144 wrote:
| Now consider the scenario where all the large agriculture
| firms and distributors cut off the Bay Area. Sure, the Bay
| Area could start their own farms to meet that need, but I
| could hardly imagine the whole population living there
| saying "This is fine, they're well within their rights."
|
| This feels to me like a situation of "fine for anyone to
| do, problematic for everyone to do". With political
| ideology not a protected class in many states, anyone is
| free to refuse service to an outspoken Democratic voter,
| but if a whole town did that it would be unthinkable. The
| specious answer of "just make your own business" wouldn't
| be practical in that scenario (are you going to start your
| own grocery, gas station, etc?).
|
| To be clear, I'm not trying to make a defense of Parler; my
| understanding having never signed up is that it was an
| unmoderated cesspool.I _am_ , however, trying to point out
| that the end result of individuals making totally
| reasonable and rational decisions within their rights can
| produce outcomes that most people would view as wrong.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| At the time the constitution was written "everyone" in
| any given industry was thousands of small businesses each
| of which was only subject to the public pressure of the
| people in the town in which they were based. So it was
| literally unthinkable that a whole industry could deny
| service to one person. I bet if the founders had
| envisioned an entity as powerful as Amazon, they would
| have written in constraints for private entities too.
| rcurry wrote:
| It's not so much the farmers as it is truckers. CA has a
| lot of agriculture but some places like NYC have a very
| limited food supply. For some reason a lot of people have
| no idea how dependent they are on rural areas. I never
| forgot this tweet from some politician from out East who
| was flying back from Denver or somewhere and posted a
| picture of the ground below the airplane (farm fields with
| patterns from circular irrigation systems) and he says "No
| idea why the ground looks like that!"
| charly187 wrote:
| "looking at the examples provided in the buzzfeed articles"
| isn't much better than looking at screenshots on facebook.
| d33lio wrote:
| I voted for Biden, but I can easily find thousands of examples
| of "threats" on Twitter coming from far left leaning accounts.
| Some even from verified accounts. I still love the fact that
| Twitter banned Anna Kachiyan of the Red Scare podcast, assuming
| it wasn't a mistake?
|
| Companies bowing to play nice with the state is troubling
| regardless of your politics.
| sterlind wrote:
| Link to the Buzzfeed article:
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p...
|
| Apparently Amazon sent them 98 examples of posts directly
| inciting violence, Parler replied with a proposal to manually
| moderate such posts with volunteers, and most of the posts
| Amazon gave as examples were still up (including some urging
| for systematic assassination or blowing up AWS data centers.)
| MisterBiggs wrote:
| All of those posts barely have any interaction or views so it
| doesn't seem like they are actually that big of an issue.
| Every social network has people saying crazy things.
| jtsiskin wrote:
| At first I very much agreed with you, all these posts have
| < 10 'likes', so it seems pretty unfair, as I'm sure you
| could find the same content on Twitter or Facebook.
|
| However reading the exact complaint made me change my mind;
| they specifically provided them with content which they
| found to be inciting violence, and Parler took no action on
| them. If they actually wanted to remove them, at the bare
| minimum they could have at least removed the ones directly
| sent to them from their hosting provider. They also have no
| plan to moderate content themselves. Facebook, Twitter,
| TikTok, etc all have report buttons which then trigger an
| employee to review the reported content, and Parler needed
| to at least say they had plans to do the same.
| sterlind wrote:
| exactly! Parler could have a report button with options
| like "Incitement to violence", "child porn", "other."
| Send the "other" reports to their manual jury system and
| have the rest reviewed for legality by staff. they've
| chosen not to, so they can go burn.
| sterlind wrote:
| the damning thing for Parler though is that they didn't
| remove those posts - which I remind you _are illegal_
| because they unambiguously incite violence - after AWS
| reported them. there is no excuse for Parler not to have
| removed those posts. they chose to ride or die with their
| jury moderation system, and died.
|
| this isn't a 1A issue. incitement to violence is not
| protected by 1A - that's been settled by the Supreme Court.
| that's why I have no sympathy for Parler's plight. also
| note that they're not protected by section 230 - these
| posts are a criminal offense, akin to not removing child
| porn.
| Closi wrote:
| I know there is a subtlety here, but I don't think it's
| illegal to host illegal speech.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| Perhaps if Parler had suggested they use mTurk to moderate,
| AWS might have given them a bit longer? What position would
| that have put Amazon in, if the moderation was being done via
| their service, but the end result of the moderation was still
| 'unacceptable'?
| oceanplexian wrote:
| If I could find 98 examples of users calling for violence on
| Twitter would you advocate for Twitter being de-platformed?
| Why or why not?
| Server6 wrote:
| If Twitter wasn't willing to at least attempt to moderate
| then yes. What's going on here isn't new. Web hosting
| services have been dropping hate speech platforms and
| forums since the internet began.
|
| The real problem is that is seems like the hate
| speech/Qanon wing of the right side of the political
| spectrum has the loudest voice and it's ruining it for
| actual conservatives.
| r00fus wrote:
| Twitter has a program. At that point, it's about the
| upstream provider having some CYA on process and Twitter's
| ability to follow through.
|
| Parler's response was a casual finger back to Amazon, and
| the response was a swift boot.
| spamizbad wrote:
| What's interesting here is it's not really "the left" trying to
| shut it down: it's more like "People who believe in the civic
| religion of the United States" vs people who do not.
|
| A ruthlessly self-interested left would benefit tremendously
| from the successful assassination of Vice President Mike Pence
| and Nancy Pelosi. It would be a galvanizing event that would
| ultimately turn most of the country against the Republican
| party. It would likely clear the way for younger, left-leaning
| Democratic leaders (AOC, Cori Bush), and it would eliminate a
| major contender for the 2024 presidential race. Biden would
| enter power with the same level of political capital as George
| W. Bush after 9/11.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| "... looking at the examples provided in the buzzfeed articles"
| is another way of saying "I ate the cherry pie made from the
| cherry-picking by the cherry-pickers." Buzzfeed is about as
| even-handed as the Norse god Tyr.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| "Buzzfeed News" and "Buzzfeed" are two distinct and separate
| organizations, with Buzzfeed News being a serious news-
| gathering organization.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| To all the HN users defending Parler by drawing false
| equivalencies to BLM, the NYTimes, Saudi Arabia, and China,
| without acknowledging the events of The last few months: shame on
| you.
|
| Parler and it's moderator team , as well as Donald Trump, has
| supported COVID denial, the election fraud conspiracy, and Q
| conspiracy, for over a year. This was a concentrated effort to
| brain wash American conservatives to completely distrust and
| disassemble the institutions of American democracy. I don't know
| if you are from other countries and do not realize the context
| and severity of these actions, or if you're troll accounts
| wishing to sow the same discord on HN. It won't work.
|
| This isn't a first amendment of free speech issue. This is a
| lifesaving step for the public commons.
|
| You can still have conservative values. Nobody got banned for
| supporting lower taxes, states rights, or being anti-abortion.
| You can promote and discuss those on Twitter Facebook and AWS on
| any day of the week. What you cannot do is organize thousands of
| individuals to commit violent acts, or call for and attempt the
| murder of rightfully elected public officials not just on January
| 6 - but again on Inauguration Day. That is why this disgusting
| content, on the same level of snuff porn and child porn, had to
| be purged from the internet.
| XiJinpinggg wrote:
| > What you cannot do is organize thousands of individuals to
| commit violent acts, or call for and attempt the murder of
| rightfully elected public officials not just on January 6 - but
| again on Inauguration Day.
|
| Democrats called for violence against Trump and Republicans for
| years and they encouraged the blm riots for months.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUGKKHVt7pI&feature=emb_titl...
| ookblah wrote:
| seriously. millions of conservatives are still on twitter/fb
| with no censorship. some of the biggest conservative "celebs"
| built their audiences on twitter and benefit from the outrage
| machine. it's so hilariously out of touch and ironic to me that
| they are criticizing these actions uncensored and then trying
| to make slippery slope arguments or play the persecuted
| minority. what happened to parler is the exception, not the
| rule.
| 6sup6 wrote:
| They are in twitter as long as they don't step the line. Try
| to misgender someone in twitter to see what happens. The idea
| of misgender comes from a very specific political tribe in
| certain western countries.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Name a single fox pundit who properly uses gender pronouns.
| They're all still on twitter.
| MichaelRazum wrote:
| Just one remark about your COVID denial president. He got the
| vaccine way faster then Europe. Especially Germany where the
| vaccine was developed as well. Not sure how many would be saved
| if Germany ordered in the same way.
| [deleted]
| swiperNoSwiping wrote:
| feels like the US people is asking for ruler like CCP, is it all
| what you want? Parler is likely not innocent, but why it's Amazon
| to take them down? Is that mean all these big companies can
| shutdown any customers on their platforms for some reasons they
| believed are right, but what if they use it to shutdown
| competitions?
| shrimpx wrote:
| Parlor is NOT Amazon competition.
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| It has always been the case that providers can shut you down
| for any or no reason. Look at gcp for a plethora of examples.
| wolco5 wrote:
| Politics aside. Amazon shouldn't be signing up to a private
| service monitoring posts and removing a site because a good
| enough moderation system wasn't in place?
|
| They sell disk space and bandwidth and possiblity ram. If all
| that Amazon is hosting is an encripted blobs I can't see how they
| would know what internal content they provide without spying
| (making an account/recording posts).
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Putting myself in AWS's shoes makes this choice seem obvious. If
| I imagine myself maintaining a server and I learn it's being used
| for death threats and coup plannings, I would tell them to stop
| doing that or I'm shutting them down. And then if they didn't do
| it I would immediately revoke their access. I don't know about
| everyone else on this site but I wasn't put on this planet to
| design and build tools for terrorists and extremists. I've been
| on Parler and it's disgusting. The public doesn't want it to be
| on AWS and AWS doesn't want it on AWS. There's no reason they
| should be forced to host it.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Parler had the option to police their users but put an
| unqualified volunteer moderation team in charge. As you can
| imagine this leads to suboptimal results where the most
| egregious content isn't removed.
|
| I was on last night and saw a picture of Peloi's house with the
| address attached. These are dangerous people that are stalking
| our democratically elected leaders.
| krrrh wrote:
| > unqualified volunteer moderation team in charge
|
| Devils advocate here, but this does for the most part work
| for Reddit.
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Reddit also has employees that ban subreddits that aren't
| effectively moderated
| reaperducer wrote:
| _saw a picture of Peloi 's house with the address attached._
|
| It's sad how publishing the address of a politician has
| become akin to a threat.
|
| When I was a journalist, all politicians had their addresses
| and phone numbers right in the phone book. We looked them up
| all the time. Voters were expected to be able to know exactly
| where their elected officials lived. It was also one way of
| verifying that they actually lived within their district.
|
| But because basic knowledge has become weaponized and abused
| by nutjobs, the general public now feels this is a threat.
| How much society has changed in a very short time.
| GaryNumanVevo wrote:
| Well to be fair, if you had browsed Parler recently you
| would have seen Nancy Pelosi's address between numerous
| _actual_ death threats to sitting politicians.
| mminer237 wrote:
| The existence of someone's address in a phone book isn't a
| threat. There's not anything inherently devious about
| making that information public, but you can't just view
| that in isolation. 99.99999% of people have no use for that
| information. If you're publishing just that person's
| address without comment, you have infer the intent from the
| circumstances. Nobody on Parler is sharing her address to
| show that she's an honest politician actually living within
| her district. The implication of sharing just one person's
| home address with people who hate her is to encourage
| malfeasance at such location. I think this implication
| would have always existed.
| us0r wrote:
| I posted a few weeks ago - someone in Kentucky is trying to
| make it a felony to post such information.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25485245
| bdcravens wrote:
| Most forms of harassment includes actions and words that in
| isolation would mean nothing.
|
| I had someone send me some very abusive and threatening
| emails, and among the images they sent, was a screenshot of
| a flight quote and a photo of my house from Google Maps.
| YarickR2 wrote:
| The public ? Oh yes famous working people of 1937's Soviet
| Union, condemning enemies of the state en masse
| minimuffins wrote:
| > If I imagine myself maintaining a server and I learn it's
| being used for death threats and coup plannings, I would tell
| them to stop doing that
|
| They better nullify their very lucrative business relationship
| with US intelligence services post haste then.
|
| > There's no reason they should be forced to host it.
|
| "Forced." Poor AWS. They didn't even consent to this!
| MichaelRazum wrote:
| Just curios. How about uber, could they refuse to service
| employes from parler :) ? Or lets say refuse service some right
| wing people. I mean it is just a private company...
| Hitton wrote:
| Probably yes. Neither company affiliation or political opinions
| are protected attributes. Possible outcome would be uncertain
| only if people claimed that their association with political
| party/company is based on their love towards it and thus its
| protected as sexual orientation or gender.
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Apparently it depends on the country. Facebook deleted personal
| profiles of NSO group employees because they hacked WhatsApp
| but then an Israeli court ruled that was illegal. Sometimes
| Facebook does the right thing.
|
| I think Uber should refuse service to those added to the no fly
| list.
|
| Some of them aren't taking it so well:
| https://mobile.twitter.com/rayredacted/status/13483886011182...
| MichaelRazum wrote:
| Interesting. How about a doctor, could he legally refuse
| treatment as well?
| ketamine__ wrote:
| Some doctors refuse treatment to anti-vaxxers now.
| chmod600 wrote:
| This is a weird case of private companies getting together and
| voluntarily enforcing the supremecy of the state. I'm sure it's
| happened before, but probably not in situations we'd like to
| emulate.
|
| Insurrection is bad, but the possibility of insurrection is good.
| When any possibility of insurrection is crushed, for everyone now
| and in the future (not just insurrectionists), that sounds like
| it won't end well for the people.
| mrlala wrote:
| >Insurrection is bad, but the possibility of insurrection is
| good
|
| Let's be realistic here though. The ONLY reason "insurrection"
| was even close to being on the table is because of the
| delusional rantings of the President for the last two months
| (and everything leading up to that.. but that's a different
| discussion).
|
| This entire election fraud thing is absolute insanity, and
| anyone who was paying attention saw this coming months before
| the election with how he was setting everything up to look like
| if Trump didn't win- it had to be fraud.
|
| So my point is, no one is trying to "stop the possibility of
| insurrection". They are trying to actively say: 'I am not
| supporting giving you a platform to spout insane lies anymore,
| because it has and could cause real _measurable_ harm ".
| legutierr wrote:
| It happens all the time in the banking arena. Banks are
| frequently used to deny market access to businesses that are
| undesirable to the federal government but are otherwise legal
| businesses.
| yalogin wrote:
| This is actually a great analogy. Its all about reducing risk
| for the overall business.
| ThrowItAway2Day wrote:
| And why sketchier businesses, such as casinos, had to turn to
| organized crime for loans and funding.
| raunakdag wrote:
| I hadn't thought about it this way. I assume marijuana
| dispensaries/businesses are one of the examples you're
| referencing?
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > private companies getting together and voluntarily enforcing
| the supremecy of the state
|
| Your choice of words implies some sort of conspiracy here. The
| response has been widespread and quite frankly should be
| unsurprising. No coordination is necessary. Any sane CEO
| running a profit driven organization will not tolerate a group
| of people whose words of violence against the state cross
| beyond hyperbole and words and into actual action. If more
| actions take place and are more successful and these companies
| decided to stick their heads in the sand then the existence of
| these companies would be under threat.
|
| This is about basic survival.
| yongjik wrote:
| It's amusing that people are simultaneously complaining that
| tech companies are censoring the president of the US and
| "enforcing the supremacy of the state" at the same time.
|
| True "deep state" conspiracy material. After four years of
| running the country, they are still underdogs.
| wolco5 wrote:
| It's too out in the open to call it a conspiracy.
| Amazon,Google, Amazon and Apple (twitter, facebook) are
| putting out press releases that say this is what they are
| doing.
|
| They are enforcing the supremacy of the state for the next
| government. If he was going back as president these companies
| would not be making these press releases.
| chmod600 wrote:
| The president is not the government; he's one part of it. The
| insurrectionists were attacking the rest of it.
|
| Very wrong, in my opinion. But I'm not sure that I want to
| completely remove the possibility of anyone organizing to do
| so in the future.
|
| To be clear, I think insurrection is nearly always bad, but
| keeping some faint possibility around is not bad.
| grahamburger wrote:
| > This is a weird case of private companies getting together
| and voluntarily enforcing the supremecy of the state.
|
| It's maybe weirder than that, because of the involvement of the
| president. Even if you believe the president was entirely
| uninvolved and unaware, the purpose of the insurrection was to
| _keep_ a leader in power, not remove one. The actions of tech
| companies are both a _challenge_ to the supremacy of the
| (current administration of the) state and a way of enforcing
| the supremacy of the state.
| chmod600 wrote:
| The insurrectionists were attacking Congress, so that makes
| things more complicated.
| SiliconMage wrote:
| You can have any opinion you want so long as it is mine.
| xyst wrote:
| There was the case of PornHub/MindGeek and MC/Visa. PH was
| hosting a ton of videos which showed exposed minors (likely
| most of it was "revenge porn") and other unsavory content. It
| wasn't until Visa/MC decided to halt processing of all PH
| transactions that PH decided to haphazardly delete ALL non-
| partnered content on the platform.
|
| This all happened in less than a week of Visa announcing it.
|
| I think the outcome was "good" but the damage had already been
| done as these videos are likely residing on servers that are
| not owned or controlled by PH. Additionally, there's probably a
| shit ton of non-partnered content that was innocuous.
|
| timeline:
|
| * nyt publishes scathing article about PH and other sites on
| 2020-12-04
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opinion/sunday/pornhub-
| ra...)
|
| * MC and Visa announce to cut ties with PH on 2020-12-11
| (https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/mastercard-and-
| visa...)
|
| * On 2020-12-14 (~3 days later), PH then purges all unverified
| content (https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgqjjy/pornhub-
| suspended-all...)
|
| In just a matter of 10 days, a billion dollar corporation
| deleted a significant amount of their content without even
| having to step into a court room.
|
| To be honest, it's kind of scary. What if you are just on the
| wrong side of a person at XYZ company? Maybe a cloud executive
| wants Y company to succeed because he or she has significant
| capital investment in it, and X competing company is about to
| roll out their product to the masses. Executive then writes up
| a scathing internal report by X company to ban them from using
| their products, or even worse "leaks" false information about X
| company to get them tied up in a public opinion battle.
| joering2 wrote:
| Fun fact: I spoke with two of my good buddies one up high
| Amazon another at Twitter. The fellow from twitter told me they
| will never suspend Trump because despite what he says, Twitter
| makes few million dollars daily (!!) off of his feed. The
| reason you see him being booted out is because my buddy from
| Amazon told me they may be ready to drop Twitter as a client
| altogether (mostly because of Trump) and the way their contract
| is designed is that Twitter would still be up for tens of
| millions of (now unfulfilled) hosting contract fees. And that
| something they won't digest. So really the decision to boot
| Trump had nothing to do with freedom of speech - its AWS who
| thretened to withdraw, and Twitter folks did some simple math
| and realized the loss from AWS contract would cost more than
| gains from RealDonaldTrump feed.
| lodovic wrote:
| That math, combined with the drop in stock price, does not
| add up.
| Daishiman wrote:
| This is speculation by an employee who clearly doesn't have
| power to make the associated business decisions.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Its called voting. That's how you change who's in power, you
| vote. We have democracy so you don't have to have an
| insurrection to change power.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| But what if you want to change who's in power but you don't
| have a majority?
|
| That's the fundamental problem facing Trump voters. How do
| they replace this slapdash democracy with one where they can
| determine who's votes actually count.
|
| Under our current system, they can only throw out a bunch of
| roadblocks to make it difficult. The new "Trumpocracy" would
| likely make voter discrimination a little more structured.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| It is hard to separate the fact that they are distancing
| themselves from a fascist, white-supremacist platform that was
| instrumental in a near-overthrow of the US government. And even
| if you think that's okay, this wasn't insurrection in response
| to oppression, it was an insurrection to overthrow an
| uncontested democratic result. I guess Parler is so radioactive
| that Amazon would rather be sued than continue to business with
| them. Further, there are reports Amazon gave them weeks of
| warnings and were ignored. AWS has rules.
| blitz_skull wrote:
| "near-overthrow"
|
| A few hundred people stalled the counting of electoral votes
| for literally a few HOURS. Hardly a "near-overthrow" of
| anything other than Trump himself.
| eclipxe wrote:
| That's only because house and senate members were
| successfully evacuated - if they weren't, what exactly did
| you think the rioters were going to do? What do you think
| they had zip ties for? What was the gallows erected outside
| for?
| wolco5 wrote:
| The government was in no danger of being overthrown.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| > _near-overthrow of the US government_
|
| That's giving WAY too much credit. The US Government is not a
| room or a building. A coup is considered successful if it
| holds power for 7 days; these jokers didn't hold power for 7
| seconds.
|
| > _insurrection to overthrow an uncontested democratic
| result._
|
| This is overstating from a certain point of view. It was
| contested in court (and soundly affirmed). Bear with me for a
| moment - _if what Trump was saying about the election were
| true_ , we would _want_ this kind of reaction. I think we can
| all agree that rigged elections are an affront to democracy.
| It 's just that _this election wasn 't rigged_, as affirmed
| by courts many times, so the mob wasn't acting righteously.
| This train of thought has some nuance so I'm not going to be
| surprised when some folks misinterpret it.
|
| There are two things to think about:
|
| 1) how have we let misinformation get so bad that it
| ultimately forms insurrection? We've got Snopes, disclaimers
| on social media, etc - is deplatforming the only thing left
| to counter fake news that calls people to violent action?
|
| 2) what are the implications of giving social media & hosting
| platforms the power to arbitrate what's fake news and what's
| not? This is incredible power and without checks & balances
| it is probably too much for individual private companies to
| hold the keys.
| pbronez wrote:
| > if what Trump was saying about the election were true, we
| would want this kind of reaction.
|
| This is an counterfactual to consider. Indeed, we should
| defend the integrity of the democratic system at almost any
| cost. However, facts matter.
|
| Trump's statements about the election were not, in fact,
| true. They are lies. The votes have been counted, recounted
| and certified. The courts have been consulted. The media
| has investigated. Election observers from both campaigns
| watched the whole thing.
|
| Some of the insurrectionists may have thought they were
| defending democracy, but that doesn't change the fact that
| they were actually attacking the very democracy they
| claimed to defend.
|
| > how have we let misinformation get so bad that it
| ultimately forms insurrection?
|
| Catastrophically bad leadership. While the individual
| insurrectionists must fact justice, the leaders who
| intentionally deluded and incited them must also be held
| accountable. Just as a tolerant society cannot tolerate
| intolerance, a lawful democracy cannot tolerate
| democratically-elected leaders who use their authority to
| attack the core mechanisms of democracy.
| wolco5 wrote:
| Reports of the government being overthrown have been greatly
| exaggerated.
| mainstreem wrote:
| If Amazon has rules, why is Twitter still up?
|
| The "PacNW Youth Liberation Front" Twitter account is still
| active. They frequently call for overthrow of the government
| and organize violent direct actions.
|
| Rose City Antifa is still active. They do the same.
|
| Salon's Tweet calling for more violence this summer and
| calling the violence that had already occurred against
| Federal properties by Leftist activists "justified" is still
| up, as is Salon's website.
|
| Khamenei's Twitter is still active, calling for the
| elimination of all Jews and Israel.
|
| I'm sure this will get downvoted. Probably flagged.
|
| But since the government can't shut down companies due to the
| content their users post, because of Section 230, I guess a
| small, colluding cartel of corporations can step in to
| silence people when the government will bend knee to the
| Leftist mob instead.
|
| It's only a matter of time before the people wielding this
| power find it turned against them, if they do not recognize
| what they are doing to discourse on the Internet.
|
| Pandora's box is fucking open now.
| marcod wrote:
| They had 50+ concrete examples of calls for violence on
| parler that were reported to AWS.
|
| > AWS has rules.
|
| Also, "we're trying to have a f'ing society here"
| chmod600 wrote:
| I don't think the Jan 6 insurrection was OK, or even close.
|
| My point is that the tools for organizing an insurrection are
| being removed, and that's at least a little scary.
|
| It's like fitting everyone with a shock collar and saying it
| will only be used against insurrectionists. The government
| will be a lot less worried about resistance, and the
| definition of "insurrectionist" is likely to move over time.
|
| It just doesn't seem like a good direction to me.
| throwaway5752 wrote:
| That's a really fair point, and it's a really hard problem.
|
| In this case, you had people trying to overthrow a
| democratic vote. So they are literally the enemies of a
| free society. But the same laws and infrastructure to
| prevent this can be misused.
|
| That's the hard stop. You can't have a governmental system
| that is fault tolerant to malicious misrule. You need to
| apply laws or laws lose power, and you need to trust those
| carrying out governing to obey some norms.
| chmod600 wrote:
| Trust isn't about blind, 100% trust. You can trust
| democracy to work without fitting yourself with a shock
| collar controlled by the pooular vote. You can trust
| government officials without assigning them blanket power
| of attorney.
|
| I am just saying that there are limits to trust. And when
| someone you 99.9% trust tries to convince you to give
| them 100% trust, you should pause.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >My point is that the tools for organizing an insurrection
| are being removed, and that's at least a little scary.
|
| Insurrections were organized well before AWS and the like
| existed, and they will still be organized well after AWS
| and the like are gone.
|
| Limiting platforms that make it easier to radicalize large
| numbers of people is still a good thing.
| Natfan wrote:
| If it helps, I agree with you here. This whole situation
| has made me a bit uneasy. While I generally agree with the
| decision made by these private companies in this specific
| instance, it does feel like there was a domino effect where
| one platform banned people for inciting violence, and then
| the rest followed suit when there was media traction on the
| story. The fact that a few people have this much unchecked
| power is a bit scary.
|
| Yes, these are private companies. Yes, they don't have to
| spend time, money or infrastructure on anyone they don't
| want on the platform, I understand all of this.
|
| What I merely want to comment on is the ubiquity of these
| websites. Facebook, Google, Twitter and even TikTok are
| increasingly becoming primary means that people around the
| world communicate. If I'm a racist prat that spams that we
| should "kill all those muslamics, innit", sure I should be
| warned or removed from these platforms, however that
| significantly diminish my means of contacting other people.
|
| I have friends that I can only really contact through
| Facebook. I'm trying to add them on multiple services so
| that I stay away from a single-point-of-failure, however
| some of my relatives are old and/or technologically inept,
| and they never check their email or SMS. While I could call
| them, if I were to get banned from Facebook that could
| reduce my ability to communicate with these people down
| quickly and easily to near zero.
|
| I understand that there are actions for your consequences,
| I just fear that with these services becoming so
| commonplace (see WeChat in China, for example), being
| locked out of these walled gardens could have severe, real
| world impacts to those that the platform doesn't like.
|
| I don't know, just food for thought.
| Craighead wrote:
| This is what burner phones with signal on them are for.
| Parler isn't a tool for organizing insurrection it's a tool
| to push propaganda and radicalism.
| halukakin wrote:
| A good example to this is the founding of the US itself.
| teddyh wrote:
| "The only thing that keeps leaders in check is the knowledge
| the population can rise up against them. By eliminating the
| Bowman's Wolves ability to string you up by your own
| intestines, you've removed them from a very important part of
| the political process."
|
| -- Sam Starfall, _Freefall_ ,
| http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff1600/fv01595.htm
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| I made an account on Parler last week, just to see. It is a
| cesspool of hate and delusion. I ran into some potentially
| illegal materials I wish to unsee, but cannot, encountered as I
| perused the streams chosen for me. The amount of crazy I saw made
| me fear posting anything, much less leaving replies that included
| reality, but failed to conform to their indoctrination.
| [deleted]
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Dang, and the other two moderators whose nicknames I don't know :
| My condolences for the last days, and thank you !
| minikites wrote:
| The free market has spoken and surprise, conservatives don't like
| it when it affects them.
| trendoid wrote:
| AWS's letter to Parler
| https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1348136296976408576/p...
|
| Seems very proper to me.
| garyclarke27 wrote:
| This vicious lethal (effectively kills Parler) action by Amazon -
| driven by a mob of woke employees - will cause long term damage
| to AWS. I had plans to use AWS for a potentially huge SAAS
| business, even though it is not likely to be contentious, just
| the thought of them being able to destroy everything overnight,
| without due process, without recourse - sends chills down my
| spine. I cannot now imagine, being able to trust Amazon for
| critical infrastructure ever again and I'm sure many other
| entrepreneurs will feel similarly.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I'm sure they'll survive. This is probably part of a
| calculation they have to ingratiate themselves with a group
| that can give them an order of magnitude more GovCloud business
| than you can public cloud.
| [deleted]
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| All hosts have the power to shutdown anything they want, this
| isn't unique to amazon.
| verytrivial wrote:
| This sounds like a reasoned moral choice for you and I applaud
| it. Some entrepreneurs will feel the same. And some would also
| be looking for providers other than AWS if they _didn 't_ hold
| Parler to the letter of their TOS in this case.
|
| It is also true that AWS and all network providers exist within
| a societal context where the speech and actions of the
| participants can result in consequences. Where the line is
| drawn and why is a never ending tension. Very, _very_ rarely is
| the extreme moral position universally true IMHO -- there is
| possibly content you would like kicked of AWS, and there will
| be poeple who can defend _anything_ in the name of free speech.
| Good luck with the SAAS, and may your customers not be
| scoundrels!
| charly187 wrote:
| Are we supposed to pretend that the same people that pushed
| for this to happen don't actively fantasize about banning
| people like Steven Crowder and The Daily Wire/Ben Shapiro?
| afavour wrote:
| This is hyperbolic in the extreme, and to blame "woke
| employees" with everything going on right now is just plain
| silly.
|
| When deciding whether to choose to host your services with AWS
| you can answer a simple question: are you planning on violating
| their terms of service? If the answer is yes, do not use AWS.
| garyclarke27 wrote:
| I'm just commenting on the decision to evict Parler from AWS,
| there were several news articles that it was employee driven
| maybe these reports are wrong, I don't know, the MSM is not
| exactly a reliable source of facts lately. I also don't see
| how Parler is responsible for the illegal behaviour of the
| rioters - surely the poor preparation by the security forces
| for a well publicised rally is more of a contributing factor
| than Parler.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > there were several news articles that it was employee
| driven
|
| Any action by a corporation not directed by the
| board/shareholders is "employee driven", since everyone
| from the C-Suite down is an employee.
|
| That's not inconsistent with it being based on terms of
| service violations, who do you think identifies those?
| jimktrains2 wrote:
| They've always been able to. Its amusing that only now is this
| a concern when nothing has changed. Gcp has done the same for
| much less or nothing to people. Azure, do, linode, &c have
| always had their tos state that they can discontinue service
| for any reason.
|
| This isn't some new threat. This is literally the way things
| have always been.
| shakezula wrote:
| Yeah, I just don't buy this at all. This has been the case with
| any hosting provider, unless you have a signed SLA guaranteeing
| you otherwise. The free market is free both ways.
| domano wrote:
| I am really happy with the way Hackernews works and the way
| moderation works here. Thank you!
|
| I do not know if there would be a possibility to scale it for a
| real social network tho.
| rm_-rf_slash wrote:
| It's more about social norms than moderation, and frankly
| things have gotten worse not better.
|
| I remember when most posts that posited any "fact" were cited
| with references, and often any lack of sources was responded
| with a request for supporting documentation.
|
| HN is slowly becoming a brainier alt-Reddit with every snide
| quip or uncited statement of opinion masquerading as fact.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| This has been my experience as well, and I've been browsing
| HN since at least 2009. Downvotes/flagging are used much more
| heavily to express political disagreement as well now (which
| biases what gets downvoted due to the left-leaning bias in
| tech) and I think there is more politics in general (but that
| is true of media more broadly).
| ralmidani wrote:
| SCOTUS Justice Robert Jackson:
|
| "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation,
| it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall
| be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters
| of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act."
|
| Also Robert Jackson:
|
| "The choice is not between order and liberty. It is between
| liberty with order and anarchy without either. There is danger
| that, if the court does not temper its doctrinaire logic with a
| little practical wisdom, it will convert the constitutional Bill
| of Rights into a suicide pact."
| loraa wrote:
| Don't ever believe you have freedom when leftists around.
| CivBase wrote:
| I don't know which social media platforms use AWS to any critical
| extent, but I can't imagine them ejecting a big name like
| Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc over "finding dozens of posts on
| the service which it said encouraged violence".
| standardUser wrote:
| It's not about finding posts encouraging violence, it is about
| refusing to try to moderate that content, and your suggestion
| otherwise is disingenuous. If Facebook said "we are no longer
| going to try and moderate content that incites violence" there
| would obviously be blowback.
| NDizzle wrote:
| It wouldn't be such a big deal if "hurts feelings" didn't
| equal "incites violence".
|
| Silence is also violence. All of you lurkers will be purged
| as well.
| domano wrote:
| I do not understand what you are saying, could you clarify?
| neogodless wrote:
| Roughly translated, "everyone who isn't on my side is
| going to be killed by our side, which might upset you,
| but I would not consider that 'inciting violence'."
|
| EDIT: I misunderstood "purge" in this context. I disagree
| that silence on moderating content is "violence" just as
| I disagree that anything you disagree with is "violence."
| But I do not believe content will be "purged" unless it's
| part of a movement to unseat democracy or coordinate
| violent actions.
| CivBase wrote:
| I disagree with what he said, but you're seemingly doing
| your best to make his point.
|
| He's saying that when a person don't like something, the
| recent trend is to just label it as "inciting violence".
| He then adds onto that by saying the idea of "silence is
| violence" means that anyone who does not speak out
| against the disliked thing is inherently guilty of
| "inciting violence" as well, so lurkers and moderates are
| not safe from being labeled.
|
| Again, I disagree with what he said. However, accusing
| his post of threatening violence against everyone with
| whom he disagrees does kind of support his point.
| neogodless wrote:
| I may have misunderstood the grandparent post, because
| I'm unclear on "you lurkers will be purged." Could you
| translate that part for me? Are you saying "purged" to
| _not_ mean removed from society?
| CivBase wrote:
| Recently, many high-profile social media posts and
| accounts have been blocked under the pretext of "inciting
| violence". In that context, I understood his post as
| saying that lurkers would also be blocked in the same way
| - as in "purged from social media". I'm definitely
| concerned with the way he worded it, though.
| treelovinhippie wrote:
| Orly...
|
| "Parler will not knowingly allow itself to be used as a tool
| for crime, civil torts, or other unlawful acts. We will
| remove reported member content that a reasonable and
| objective observer would believe constitutes or evidences
| such activity. We may also remove the accounts of members who
| use our platform in this way."
|
| https://legal.parler.com/documents/guidelines.pdf (obviously
| inaccessible now).
| charly187 wrote:
| This myth that Parler doesn't moderate is simply not true.
| All screenshotted accounts I could find on Buzzfeed - such as
| ones from @QanonLV were banned from there before it was taken
| down.
| bebopcowboy wrote:
| Don't bother man, the morons on this site have already
| decided what they believe, and it conveniently aligns with
| their political beliefs.
| throwaways885 wrote:
| HN is not full of morons. I do agree with you that Parler
| is generally misrepresented, but there is plenty of
| dissenters here. Things aren't as unbalanced as you
| perceive.
| Fellshard wrote:
| It's the clear double standard that makes this concerning.
| eejit_compiler wrote:
| Indeed, and I think it's because Parler is best known for
| hosting violent, far-right content, that is linked to the
| recent insurrection at the Capitol Building. Whereas the other
| services you cite are much more generic in their clientele.
|
| So based on this, Amazon made a business decision to deny
| service to Parler, due to the adverse publicity (and perhaps,
| potential legal liability) generated for them by hosting this
| content.
| derision wrote:
| What about calling for the eradication of Jews?
| https://twitter.com/khamenei_ir/status/1003332853525110784
|
| Twitter doesn't seem to have any issue with this content
| valuearb wrote:
| That's not what that tweet says. So you admit your argument
| carries little weight without sensationalizing it?
| jtdev wrote:
| Did you not read the tweet? Seems rather clear to me.
| jtdev wrote:
| Do those downvoting here actually support the sentiment
| of the Ayatollah??
| valuearb wrote:
| Israel is a country, Jews are a race. You can be for the
| replacement of Israel with a more inclusive nation-state
| without calling for a Jewish genocide.
|
| Now you and I both know the Ayatollah believes in a
| Jewish genocide, but this particular tweet isn't proof or
| evidence of it.
| mminer237 wrote:
| You have to understand things in context though. Trump
| never said "storm the US capitol". Twitter's official
| reason for banning him was for glorifying violence by
| tweeting that "The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who
| voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT
| AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They
| will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way,
| shape or form!!!" and that he wouldn't be going to the
| inauguration.
|
| If you can twist that into supporting the rioters and
| calling for violence at the inauguration, I don't see how
| you can't see calling for the destruction of Israel could
| cause people to be anti-Semitic.
|
| If Trump tweeted that Mexico was cancerous tumor on
| America that has to be removed and eradicated, it is
| possible, and it will happen, do you think Twitter be
| cool with that? What if he had previously endorsed the
| genocide of all Mexican people? What if Americans had
| commonly been committing terrorist attacks against
| Mexicans?
| enriquec wrote:
| The tweet says: "#Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor
| in the West Asian region that has to be removed and
| eradicated: it is possible and it will happen."
|
| Do you think that is not as bad as what Trump has said?
| valuearb wrote:
| Israel is a country, the Jews are a race. The poster
| claimed it called for the eradication of a race, not a
| nation.
|
| And it can be argued that if the Israeli nation wasn't a
| socialist theocracy, things would be much better there,
| just as we can say the same for Iran.
| enriquec wrote:
| or the fact that nicolas maduro - a man already convicted
| of crimes against humanity by the UN - still has an account
| and has gone uncensored. how anyone here defends such
| blatant hypocrisy is beyond me
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Please remind me when Nicolas Maduro led an armed mob
| into the US Capitol.
|
| We judge threats not only on their intent, but on their
| success in executing that intent. On that measure, Parler
| is much more dangerous than Maduro, Putin, or the
| Ayatollah.
| megous wrote:
| You don't watch non-US news much, do you?
| StellarTabi wrote:
| I remember when the US tried to overthrow Maduro
| recently, what do you mean?
| enriquec wrote:
| evidence?
| StellarTabi wrote:
| https://www.vox.com/2020/5/11/21249203/venezuela-coup-
| jordan...
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Actually, I do. Does Venezuelan news tell you that Maduro
| successfully occupied Washington?
| StellarTabi wrote:
| I don't think "convicted of crimes against humanity by
| the UN" violates Twitter's ToS, and I'm assuming he
| didn't use Twitter to commit any of the alleged crimes,
| so this is a pretty bad faith, whataboutism, complete
| non-sense, etc.. By this logic you could ban both Bush
| and Obama, too.
| turing_complete wrote:
| How ignorant or evil must someone be to think Bush and
| Obama are like Nicolas Maduro?
| StellarTabi wrote:
| War in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, Drone strike, also
| irrelevant since those activities also didn't break
| Twitter's ToS?
| santoshalper wrote:
| I agree with you. Both Donald trump and Khamenei should
| have been kicked off twitter.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| Twitter let Trump spew his garbage right up until the point
| that it led to an armed insurrection.
|
| So far, Parler and its associates have come a lot closer to
| dismantling American democracy than Iran ever has. That's
| why they get taken more seriously.
|
| As Twitter said, it's not just the content, but the context
| as well. When Iranian soldiers invade the US Capitol, I'm
| sure they'll face a Twitter ban as well.
| ryan93 wrote:
| The mob in the capital had zero chance of dismantling
| democracy. khamenei has real power.
| hackyhacky wrote:
| The mob nearly succeeded in capturing, kidnapping, or
| killing democratically-elected members of Congress. Or,
| as they were chanting, in hanging the vice president. I
| see no reason not to take them seriously.
|
| The leadership in Iran, in contrast, has not gotten any
| closer to its goal of destroying Israel since the
| Revolution.
| the_drunkard wrote:
| it's clear that selective enforcement occurs, especially on
| Twitter. while i'm sure there are examples of violence
| being incited on Parler, I can find just as many examples
| (if not more) on Twitter.
| CivBase wrote:
| Then maybe AWS should just come out and say "We disabled our
| services for Parler because it's very unpopular and we don't
| want to be associated with it."
| mech422 wrote:
| I'd be happier with something like:
|
| "parler is just not worth the aggravation" - they are
| likely to be a minuscule revenue source that requires
| constant monitoring to make sure we not facing any
| liability, as well as potentially pissing off our existing
| clients. Therefore, its in our best interests just not to
| bother with them.
|
| Anyone that thinks corporations care one way or another
| about anything except their bottom lines, has a much higher
| view of corporations then I do.
|
| I mean when MC & Visa decided pornhub was a potential
| liability, they cut them off. When companies decide Trump
| or Parler are a liability - they do the same - they cut
| them off. That's just capitalism. No master except the
| almighty dollar.
|
| but if they were at least honest about it, maybe we could
| stop re-hashing this everyday...
| eejit_compiler wrote:
| They pretty much already did. In corporate PR terms, "it
| contravened our Terms of Service" is essentially synonymous
| with "we don't want to be associated with it".
| valuearb wrote:
| Conservatives support AWS right to decide who it wants to do
| business with, so implicitly they support the ejection of
| Parlour.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That doesn't mean what you think it does.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I would be near willing to bet that more of the Capitol Hill
| events were planned on private Facebook groups, chats, etc than
| on Parler. Signal is a chat app that is secure and group chats
| are big in planning... So are they going to ban Signal?
| Conspiracy theories are rampant on WeChat and even over text
| messages.
| valuearb wrote:
| You'd likely be wrong. You have to meet your conspirators on
| public platforms or in public places before you can switch to
| private communications.
| partiallypro wrote:
| I just said they probably were on private Facebook groups,
| once you meet there you can branch out to Signal and
| WeChat, etc. My point is that you don't see calls to ban
| those apps, but everyone is celebrating Parler's death. I
| think everyone should be careful what they wish for.
| Faark wrote:
| Equating private with public messaging is ridiculous. Not
| sure how laws are in the US, but when doing support here
| in germany we had to have private in-game messages
| reported by a participant before we were even allowed to
| look at them. The company obviously had a much easier
| time shaping the atmosphere in the public forum.
|
| Also while ensuring those tools can never be used for
| "evil" is unreasonable, we should expect dominant players
| to do what they can or at least not do a lot worse than
| everyone else. Are you arguing Parler tried to moderate
| as much as others?
| sigstoat wrote:
| public platforms like twitter and facebook and whatever for
| the last X years?
|
| conservatives have watched themselves banned piecemeal from
| these platforms, they know exactly what's coming.
|
| the ones you're worried about have already got private
| comms.
| [deleted]
| atlgator wrote:
| Agree. Parler's discovery capability was garbage. You had to
| search for and follow big name people to get anywhere. So if
| Parler was really the breeding ground for the Capitol siege
| there'd be a clear smoking gun on who the organizers were.
| That never surfaced.
|
| Meanwhile there are lots of private conservative/Republican
| groups on Facebook no one wants to talk about.
| [deleted]
| kingdomcome50 wrote:
| That's not the reason, and we all know it.
|
| We live in a capitalist free-market system. Amazon (or any
| entity) is free to choose with whom they do business (oh the
| irony!). They are dropping Parler because the the current
| political climate has manifest in such a way that they think it
| will cost them _more_ financial and /or political capital than
| the alternative (recall there is a lot of antitrust sentiment
| out there right now).
|
| Too bad so sad. Sorry not sorry. This is exactly the kind of
| "freedom" for which many of the above platform's users would
| advocate. Parler's PR team is missing the opportunity to
| applaud AWS for exercising their freedoms.
| CivBase wrote:
| Okay, but shouldn't it at least bother you that Amazon is
| lying about their reason? I don't think congratulating a
| company for exercising their rights is appropriate when
| they're actively lying to our faces.
|
| Unless, of course, they actually stand by what they've said.
| In which case we come right back to my original post.
| kingdomcome50 wrote:
| What am I supposed to say?
|
| Amazon doesn't really come off as the "good guy" by
| admitting they have weighed the current political climate
| against their profits. Especially given whose about to be
| in charge. They made a business decision and wrapped up in
| some good 'ol PR spin/legalese. It happens all the time.
| About everything. It's still their right to refuse service.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| The distinction, that AWS, Google, and Apple have all claimed,
| is that Parler refuses to sufficiently moderate the inciting of
| violence. Perhaps that claim is in error, perhaps such
| judgements are too subjective. If so, large social media
| companies might avoid AWS for fear of it.
| leereeves wrote:
| If that means that Parler refuses to moderate the actual
| planning or threatening of crimes, the legal system would
| shut them down. Section 230 doesn't protect social media
| companies from criminal liability.
|
| If that merely means that Parler allows posts that make
| people angry with a fair amount of violent rhetoric, well,
| that's all social media. In that case, the distinction is
| partisan, not principled.
| traveler01 wrote:
| Because that would be very expensive for them...
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Not moderating their uh, "content", is very expensive for
| the rest of us. It's potentially, an extreme expense for
| Amazon. No one has an obligation to let their business
| suffer for you.
| victords wrote:
| Who is the "rest of us"? Facebook, Twitter...?
|
| It's obvious there should have been more moderation.
| However, Parler is a 30 employee start up. Their efforts
| would fall sort of the ideal either way...
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _that Parler refuses to sufficiently moderate_
|
| Where can one find a definition of "sufficient" in this
| context?
| [deleted]
| moate wrote:
| Probably the ToS has language about when AWS can decide to
| stop hosting. I would assume the langue is extremely broad,
| legally speaking, in how much control it gives AWS to their
| own platform.
|
| If you're going to build something aimed entirely at
| "taking down/riling up the establishment" you need to make
| sure you're not entirely dependent on the establishment to
| keep your something online.
| jcranmer wrote:
| The Amazon email to Parler says:
|
| > Over the past several weeks, we've reported 98 examples
| to Parler of posts that clearly encourage and incite
| violence. [...] It also seems that Parler is still trying
| to determine its position on content moderation. You remove
| some violent content when contacted by us or others, but
| not always with urgency. [...] This is further demonstrated
| by the fact that you still have not taken down much of the
| content that we've sent you.
|
| (quoting from https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpacz
| kowski/amazon-p..., it's a ways down the page).
|
| The email is lacking in specifics, though.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _You remove some violent content when contacted by us
| or others, but not always with urgency. [...] This is
| further demonstrated by the fact that you still have not
| taken down much of the content that we've sent you._
|
| Assuming this is true, it's why I shed no tears for
| Parler and their circumstances.
|
| _However_ , things like "sufficient" and "urgency" need
| to be established in law, after which the rules are clear
| and _all_ of these platforms can be held to account for
| the content they host and spread.
| NineStarPoint wrote:
| Should those things be established by law though? First
| amendment says the government shouldn't be able to
| prosecute your for speech for a reason, letting the
| entity with a monopoly on violence say what speech is
| acceptable/how to deal with it is a massive issue. I'd
| much rather speech be deal with as it has here, with
| individual corporations and people refusing to work with
| bad actors as they see fit. This sort of suppression of
| speech is the free market of ideas in action, in my mind.
|
| If it turns out that gives the current tech giants too
| much individual power, that's a separate issue to deal
| with.
| makeworld wrote:
| Yes, because "dozens" represents different percentages of
| content on Parler vs much much bigger platforms like Twitter.
| Parler is filled with content that encourages violence, while
| Twitter is used for all kinds of things.
| layoutIfNeeded wrote:
| So they could have just filled their site with GPT3-generated
| nonsense to reach the acceptable percentage of nonviolent
| content? Cool!
| moralestapia wrote:
| Can you provide (or estimate) numbers on that?
|
| And also, what is the threshold for deciding which platform
| is on one side or another?
| eejit_compiler wrote:
| The threshold is if the management at Amazon etc. feel that
| it would generate too much bad publicity and/or potential
| legal liability for them to provide service to an
| organization mired in such controversy.
| jtdev wrote:
| Ayatollah posts to Instagram... they don't seem to care much
| about that.
| margaretdouglas wrote:
| Whataboutisms aren't an argumentative position.
| kofejnik wrote:
| they actually are, when we're discussing selective rule
| enforcement
| zmb_ wrote:
| I'm struggling to try to understand what this means for the risks
| of running a business in the cloud going forward. It was not just
| AWS dropping them, but many of their other vendors dropped them
| too, essentially killing their business overnight.
|
| Granted, for this first case the bar was extremely high. You
| needed literal storming of the Capitol and a platform seemingly
| specifically targeted at those people for this to happen.
| However, now that the precedent is set, I would expect the bar to
| be lowered going forward. That creates risks that need to somehow
| be mitigated (and reflected in valuations).
|
| Even for businesses that are not in such politically charged
| areas, I can easily imagine getting inadvertently tangled up in
| some popular issue and having vendors become targets of online
| activist (whether it's your own vendors, or whether you are a
| vendor to a target).
|
| What are the best mitigations here, both technical and social?
| Vocally side with the popular issues, or try to stay completely
| out of them, to try to avoid becoming a target (e.g., social
| media presence)? Try to reduce dependence on cloud providers and
| vendors by building more in-house? How far would you have to go,
| since a colo or an ISP can drop you just as AWS can?
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Probably to mitigate the way one mitigates against other
| disasters, such as natural disasters or political upheaval in a
| nation: have an exit plan to a partitioned cloud environment.
|
| Since we're talking political consequences, the partitioning
| here would be political. Whatever nation owns the companies you
| do business with, find counterpart companies in nations on poor
| terms with those host nations and have a plan in place to ramp
| up infrastructure in those nations quickly (or keep it on "hot
| standby").
|
| There is the risk that data migration could violate laws in the
| originating nation, if you're exfiltrating data that the host
| nation's laws don't allow to be exfiltrated.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| You're preaching to the choir. We've been having discussions on
| HN for years about the dangers of swapping the short-term
| benefits of AWS for the long-term dangers it can bring. I'm
| sure there's some Nostradamus on here that predicted this exact
| situation with Parler. The dangers were obvious and clear to
| anyone who was paying attention but not everyone was paying
| attention. Hopefully, this gets managers and CEOs to double-
| check if the benefits of AWS/EWS truly outweigh the risks.
| sn_master wrote:
| Even their own lawyers dropped them out of fear....
| DangerousPie wrote:
| I think the mitigation is "don't build a platform to attract
| white supremacists banned from other sites and then watch as
| they use it to plan a riot in the Capitol."
| hertzrat wrote:
| Imagine a hypothetical, well-intentioned free speech focused
| platform, without censorship and with low moderation: it will
| attract those people because those people have nowhere else
| to go. That strategy is a non-starter. The real requirement
| is that we are pushing for a world of auto-moderation where
| robots have to approve every single thing we say online -
| otherwise you are not allowed to let people communicate.
| Blahah wrote:
| Right, if someone wants to build a business and can't do it
| without making it easier for hate groups and terrorists to
| organise, why would any government allow the business to
| exist? It's fundamentally a threat to any nation for it to
| allow profit from enabling sedition.
| sbarre wrote:
| Just to be clear about this specific case: There is
| "evidence" (Twitter posts) coming out that showed that all
| new users of Parler were shadowbanned by default, until
| their posts/content were approved by a small group of
| "right-think" moderators.
|
| So while your hypothetical isn't invalid in general, it's
| really not what was happening here with Parler.
|
| What they said they were trying to be was not at all what
| they were actually doing - a common theme in extremist
| spaces.
|
| But your overall concern about the concentration and
| centralization of our communications is legit. There's no
| easy answer there.
| crististm wrote:
| The irony. You mean they did exactly what twitter does
| but on the right wing? They deserve to be digitally
| obliterated!!!!
| chess_buster wrote:
| No they don't. You are making this up.
| Daishiman wrote:
| You platform is indeed hypothetical because what you're
| asking for is essentially impossible. Low moderation just
| doesn't work at large scale without a substantial number of
| people suffering from its effects, including harrassment,
| threats of violence, spamming, and child pornography.
|
| I would say that this hasn't been possible for at least the
| last 15 years.
| [deleted]
| caminocorner wrote:
| The planning was largely done on Facebook
| https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1348619731734028293
| [deleted]
| mcguire wrote:
| Here are the AWS Service Terms (https://aws.amazon.com/service-
| terms/) and the AWS Acceptable Use Policy
| (https://aws.amazon.com/aup/). You are responsible for
| understanding and following these as well as the appropriate
| laws (which probably require the assistance of a lawyer, which
| I am not, and which is probably a good idea in any case).
|
| If a service provider refuses you service and you believe it
| violates the terms of service that you agreed to (that's going
| to be a hard row to hoe), you should have legal recourse.
| (Still not a lawyer, though.)
|
| Technically, the safest approach would be to build your own
| geographically-distributed server facilities and get your own
| Autonomous System Number. Remember to take care---the legal
| responsibilities in individual countries differ.
| nautilus12 wrote:
| The problem is that someone (Parler in this case) would have
| to actively build automated moderation systems or be
| philosophically aligned with moderation in order to fulfill
| the TOS in this case since its the users driving the
| violation. The baseline shouldn't require them build
| something, that seems like a burden too far. Suppose the
| violators were bots, doesn't this mean that anyone that can't
| build a moderation system to keep up with the bots becomes
| collateral damage?
| res0nat0r wrote:
| > doesn't this mean that anyone that can't build a
| moderation system to keep up with the bots becomes
| collateral damage?
|
| Yes.
| m1sta_ wrote:
| I'm not sure there is a real risk. Slippery slope falacy is
| easy to reach for here.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > What are the best mitigations here
|
| What are you trying to mitigate?
|
| You can't mitigate "Getting banned for making a place to plan a
| coup". You can't mitigate "I want a place to allow posts
| advocating criminal activity".
|
| If people were openly discussing breaking and entering houses,
| should that be allowed too?
|
| Why should we tolerate publicly planning violence when we don't
| tolerate publicly planning other crimes?
| bawolff wrote:
| You can mitigate anything (i dont think you should, but that
| is a different question). I dont think the original poster
| was suggesting that type of thing (more a fear of slippery
| slope), but for the sake of argument, if they were tor hidden
| services would be the obvious way to mitigate.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > You can mitigate anything
|
| My point is what this guy seems to want to enable is
| fundamentally conspiring to commit crimes.
|
| He seems to talk around that, but that's where we are.
| bawolff wrote:
| I think you're reading in things he did not say. He seems
| concerned he will be unpopular not illegal. Whether or
| not that is a reasonable concern is debatable... but
| history certainly has examples of that sort of thing.
|
| That said, there are plenty of websites that do conspire
| to do illegal acts and seem to get away with it, for a
| time at least. (pirate bay, sci-hub are two im ok with
| ethically. The silk road is an example im less ok with)
| ogre_codes wrote:
| Parler had no trouble getting in the App Store and AWS
| when they were perceived as merely espousing an unpopular
| opinion.
|
| Parler was blocked only after there was clear evidence
| that criminal activity was being openly planned on their
| platform _and that planning was acted on_.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| At the risk of sounding snide, it appears that if your business
| plan is to attract the type of users that foment hate and
| violence ... you are in a risky business.
|
| Anything other than that at this point is a slippery slope
| fallacy.
| Lutger wrote:
| Mitigation: don't try to overthrow a democratic government. If
| you want to build meinspace, be prepared to secure a server in
| Switzerland or something.
|
| I mean, video inciting violence in the name of the Jihad are
| also taken offline. This is pretty similar. The rules are
| fairly clear and rational and always have been, the only
| difference is that they are now enforced and there has been a
| coup attempt by white supremacists.
| namedpipe wrote:
| The best mitigation strategy here is to engage your vendors
| with private contracts instead of depending on generic terms of
| service (ToS) alone.
|
| Every company I've worked with has negotiated separate
| agreements with providers to reduce risk. Including contracts
| with both AWS and Azure.
|
| If your business gets to a certain size and you are still on
| the generic ToS and paying by credit card you have a big risk
| on your hands. You could be terminated at any point.
|
| With a private contract you can negotiate things like a
| termination notice. You can put in place a grace period before
| things are shut off. You can implement dispute procedures that
| are unique to your business needs so that when you and the
| vendor disagree it doesn't immediately disrupt your business.
|
| None of this is easy. But if your business absolutely depends
| on public cloud hosting you'd be stupid not to call up your
| vendor and negotiate.
|
| If you are unwilling to do that, then you need to make sure you
| diversify your cloud. It's much less likely that two competing
| cloud vendors would shut you off at exactly the same time.
| runako wrote:
| I agree with this general idea, but also any bespoke service
| contract approved by a competent attorney will still have
| clauses for instant-kill under certain circumstances.
|
| For example, no provider would provide service under a
| bespoke contract obligating them to knowingly host & serve
| illegal content (because this creates legal liability for the
| provider).
|
| What is alleged about Parler would likely fit into the
| instant-kill provisions of even any reasonable bespoke
| contract.
|
| [Edit: obviously this does not apply to providers
| specifically in the business of catering to high-risk
| customers. Stripe doesn't do gambling or porn, but other
| providers presumably have different pricing or risk
| mitigation/tolerance and therefore on can use credit cards to
| pay for these items.]
| bawolff wrote:
| I think the poster was worried about slippery slope - today
| they come for the evil men, tomorrow they come for the
| unpopular men, the next day they come for me. In such a
| context i assume the poster isnt actually planning to host
| anything illegal or even distatsteful to current views, so
| a good contract should be fully negotiatable.
| lolc wrote:
| > If you are unwilling to do that, then you need to make sure
| you diversify your cloud. It's much less likely that two
| competing cloud vendors would shut you off at exactly the
| same time.
|
| I actually think that the providers would fall like dominoes.
| See what Apple and Google did to the app. Once a big company
| shows you the door because they worry about legal risks and
| reputational damage, other companies will take note and
| you'll have a hard time staying on.
|
| You'll have to find a company that does it out of idealism.
| Or one that is socially disconnected enough that the threats
| to reputation and legal risks do not apply.
| okprod wrote:
| I don't think it's possible to secure a contract with such
| favorable terms that you can not get cut off for inciting
| physical violence on government property. OP would also need
| to be a fairly large player to able to negotiate favorable
| terms with someone like AWS to begin with.
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > You could be terminated at any point.
|
| You could be "terminated at any point" regardless of what the
| contract says if something as bizarre as what happened last
| week occurs and your platform was an integral part of it.
| Contracts only go so far. Not everything in human affairs
| runs like clockwork, contracts are broken all the time.
| jhowell wrote:
| > If you are unwilling to do that, then you need to make sure
| you diversify your cloud. It's much less likely that two
| competing cloud vendors would shut you off at exactly the
| same time.
|
| Isn't that what happened, they lost all of their cloud
| providers because the providers could not justify being part
| guaranteeing reliable service delivery of under moderated
| content?
| bird_monster wrote:
| > I'm struggling to try to understand what this means for the
| risks of running a business in the cloud going forward. It was
| not just AWS dropping them, but many of their other vendors
| dropped them too, essentially killing their business overnight.
|
| Businesses that are not terror cells have nothing to worry
| about. Companies have always pulled away from extremist groups.
| You wouldn't expect Microsoft to accept a contract with ISIS,
| would you?
|
| This is really not that complicated. Once you attempt to
| overthrow a country's government, businesses in that country
| don't want to work with you. This has always been true.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| > Businesses that are not terror cells have nothing to worry
| about.
|
| What is your definition of a terror cell? Do Amazon,
| Microsoft, and Google qualify as terror cells for competing
| for billion dollar contracts with the DoD? This is an absurd
| benchmark with no basis in reality.
|
| https://cnbc.com/2019/10/25/microsoft-wins-major-defense-
| clo...
| jounker wrote:
| You are making a false equivalency.
|
| Parler exists solely to provide a place for right wing
| ideology to escape from facebook and twitter's moderation
| and fact checking policies.
|
| It has already been used as one of the primary means of
| coordinating an attempted coup, and it was being used to
| coordinate subsequent attempts on the 19th and 20th. This
| is the activity which was not effectively being moderated,
| and arguably it was the kind of activity that it was
| created to foment.
| bird_monster wrote:
| It's really not, and has never been. A group of people
| literally organized on Facebook and brought guns to
| overtake the capitol. It's pretty cut and dry. Again,
| nobody would've expected Microsoft to support ISIS' tech.
| Businesses have always pulled away from extremist groups
| like this, as is their right to do.
|
| The "whataboutism" on DoD contracts isn't relevant. If your
| stance is "Our own government is a terror cell", well
| obviously then our entire society is gone anyway, so why
| even bother discussing the ethics of tech in america at
| all? But obviously this stance is just hyperbole in an
| attempt to dismiss the validity of claiming the rioters as
| legitimate terrorists.
|
| And even by your own example, when has the DoD ever stormed
| the capitol? Or attempted to overthrow the US government?
| Spoiler: they haven't. And these insanely silly attempts at
| implying that legitimate businesses are under the same
| category as fascist extremists is a joke. This tech
| precedent pearl clutching is such an insanely bad look it's
| difficult to even fathom. My assertion is simple: when you
| try to overthrow a country's government, companies in that
| country don't want to work with you. The waters are muddier
| with respect to overthrowing other people's governments,
| but the DoD has never once attempted to overthrow the US
| government. There has never been an AWS-supported US coup
| (before last week). SO the "whatabouts" aren't even
| relevant.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| > The "whataboutism" on DoD contracts isn't relevant.
|
| Of course it seems irrelevant, because you completely
| missed the point, by miles.
|
| To give another example, ever heard of CHAZ or the siege
| of the Portland US District Courthouse? Where is big
| tech's response to that?
|
| Do you really think large corporations should be trusted
| to decide who a "terrorist" is and apply that standard
| fairly?
| obviouslynotme wrote:
| If AWS is dropping you, then Facebook, Twitter, and Google
| probably already have. Stripe, Cloudflare, and Paypal are
| probably doing the same. If you try to continue, Visa,
| MasterCard, and your ISP will shut you down next. This is the
| world we live in now. You can be removed from commerce by a
| unanimous decision that you will be told never happened. I am
| just glad I can shut people down hard now when they say, "If
| you don't like X, then build your own X." I have now watched
| two Twitter clones and one Patreon clone be shutdown by magical
| sudden decisions made in lockstep. My guess is that BitChute is
| next.
| jhowell wrote:
| > I have now watched two Twitter clones and one Patreon clone
| be shutdown by magical sudden decisions made in lockstep.
|
| Magical?
| himujjal wrote:
| exactly. look at whatsapp now for example.
|
| from being one of the most privacy friendly faces of the mobile
| to being portrayed as privacy invader (i know messages are
| E2EE). but see the effects. things happen slowly.
|
| did amazon or big tech do the right thing here? probably yes.
|
| did they see that their influence is massive? yes. (they
| already do know, just stirring up their convictions stronger
| now)
|
| Is there a chance in future that they might just misuse their
| powers without anyone knowing it? most certainly yes.
|
| Its a real trolley problem for me as a privacy supporter.
| sn_master wrote:
| Messages are E2EE, but by default get backed up into your
| Google/Apple account which are easily accessible by a search
| warrant, or from a prism backdoor.
| okprod wrote:
| If you a run a business that violates the terms of service of
| your vendors, be prepared to be cut off. It's like if I rent an
| apartment and decide to make meth; I shouldn't be surprised if
| I get evicted.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Read the TOS before subscribing to a service would be a good
| start. And have a plan 'B' and if you plan on starting a
| revolution maybe have a plan 'C', 'D' and 'E' as well just in
| case.
| nhoughto wrote:
| Kinda interesting as a threat model, if 4chan/the wrong people
| can maliciously use your service enough to get it cancelled /
| shutdown just for the lols. I imagine a few startups aren't
| building moderating content / moderation teams as part of their
| MVP..
| Closi wrote:
| 100% agree - but I think this can only be solved via
| legislation.
|
| Amazon has too much market power if it can shut down another
| company at the push of a button for something that isn't
| illegal (even if it's distasteful).
| b0bb1z3r0 wrote:
| It is illegal to conspire to commit violence against the US
| frockington1 wrote:
| How is any social media platform up? I understand why
| Parler was taken down, but why is this not applied to every
| single website? I'm sure we can find a 'conspiracy to
| commit violence against the US' in this single article
| thread
| caleb-allen wrote:
| Amazon is not the only cloud provider. Parler could have just
| as easily been a customer of Microsoft or Google
| nix23 wrote:
| Hehe as is if those are any better.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Was the parler content legal? "Amazon Web Services suspended
| Parler from its web hosting services... citing a letter it
| had obtained that mentions 98 examples of Parler posts that
| "encourage and incite violence." Don't forget that Amazon
| also has legal liability for hosting and distributing illegal
| content.
|
| Amazon is not a monopoly -- the mitigation for AWS being able
| to cut off your business is to architect your application
| such that you can move it to another cloud vendor.
|
| If your content is so toxic that other cloud vendors won't
| accept you either, then maybe the problem isn't with the
| cloud vendors.
| nautilus12 wrote:
| But is that Parler breaking the law or its users??
| jounker wrote:
| Let's be honest about this. Parler exists to host right
| extremists who are tired of being moderated and fact
| checked by twitter and facebook.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Yes.
| sn_master wrote:
| "legal" in a democracy is something that only a court can
| decide.
|
| I don't know what was Parler's size, but in any website
| with millions of visitors a handful will post aweful things
| each day. Were those 98 posts posted by the same user? Did
| anyone report them and Parler refused to take them down?
| Were they popular or downvoted with few views?
| Johnny555 wrote:
| So if someone posts a plot to kill lawmakers, take over
| the government all while using their website to organize
| the insurrection, you're saying that they can't be held
| to ToS terms banning illegal content until a court has
| ruled on whether or not their insurrection is illegal?
|
| I haven't seen the examples that AWS provided to Parler,
| but I trust that AWS lawyers signed off on the plan so
| they show a lack of moderation on Parler's part.
| sn_master wrote:
| When there was a plot against the Michigan governor,
| without a single step of the plot going into action
| everyone was arrested and convicted and no one from
| either party complained about that, after being shown the
| evidence.
|
| If Parler or someone on Parler is doing something wrong,
| arrest and convict them using the law.
|
| AWS lawyers can sign-off anything because the Terms and
| Conditions are skewed entirely in AWS favor, let alone
| the new king in town.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _If Parler or someone on Parler is doing something wrong,
| arrest and convict them using the law._
|
| So you're in favor of removing moderation entirely and
| hosting providers given broad immunity from liability for
| any type of content -- feel free to plot your murder,
| host child porn, plan an insurrection, whatever; and it
| should be up to the government to track down the
| responsible parties.... even if those parties are
| untraceable or not even in the USA?
|
| _AWS lawyers can sign-off anything because the Terms and
| Conditions are skewed entirely in AWS favor, let alone
| the new king in town._
|
| So you don't dispute that Parler violated the ToS, you're
| disputing the ToS themselves and that they unfairly
| target companies like Parler?
| sn_master wrote:
| AWS is within their legal rights. This thread is about
| the ethics of what they did and this is clear.
|
| I didn't say anything about removing moderation. In fact
| I talked about reporting the offending posts and making
| sure the website owner took action within a timely
| fashion, action which includes reporting the details to
| the authorities.
|
| Parler was one of the few sites that required a photo ID
| verification to make posts, precisely for that kind of
| reason. If they wanted to turn a blind eye, they would
| have kept it anonymous.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| AWS said:
|
| _It's clear that Parler does not have an effective
| process to comply with the AWS terms of service._
|
| They didn't say "98 people posted bad things so you
| suck", they said that Parler was lacking a system to
| prevent those kinds of posts and provided 98 examples.
|
| _I didn 't say anything about removing moderation. In
| fact I talked about reporting the offending posts and
| making sure the website owner took action within a timely
| fashion, action which includes reporting the details to
| the authorities._
|
| Why do you think that Parler should be able to moderate
| their users, ban them or report them to authorities, but
| AWS should not be allowed to do the same with their own
| customers?
|
| _This thread is about the ethics of what they did and
| this is clear_
|
| That's the funny thing about ethics -- everyone has their
| own set of ethics. I think that if a site abuses the ToS
| of a provider and allows their platform to be used to
| plan an insurrection, then that provider ought to be able
| to terminate services.
|
| _Parler was one of the few sites that required a photo
| ID verification to make posts, precisely for that kind of
| reason_
|
| You don't need to give ID to post on Parler. Becoming
| verified gives you some additional access/visiblity (for
| example, users can block posts from unverified users),
| but verification is not neccessary to post.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I'm calling total crap on that. At best this is civil law
| and contract interpretation between the two parties.
|
| Or, should AWS be forced to host the Daily Stormer
| against their own freedom of association?
| nomdep wrote:
| Yes. AWS is so big that the common carrier laws should
| apply to it.
| sn_master wrote:
| I was addressing OP who said the content was illegal. AWS
| is within their legal rights to boot anyone off because
| of the Terms and Conditions. This thread is about the
| ethical side of what they did.
| sbilstein wrote:
| Parler was essentially 90% MAGA shouting. There was
| virtually no content that was non-political and it was
| basically the Twitter version of the anti-Obama rumor
| emails my boomer dad kept forward me from 2008-2016. I
| had the app, checked it quite a bit while trying to
| understand the other side better.
| sn_master wrote:
| Are MAGA-shouting or the anti-Obama rumors illegal? How
| about the countless anti-Trump rumors, including the ones
| involving his children?
| sbilstein wrote:
| ...I was just answering the question around what the
| content was like on Parler.
| sn_master wrote:
| The answer is inviting for discussion tho..
| sildur wrote:
| MAGA people are at best fascists, at worst terrorists. If
| it's not illegal it should be.
| sn_master wrote:
| Trump got seventy two million votes a couple months ago.
| Are they all fascists too, or just the "MAGA subset"? How
| big is that subset you think?
| nix23 wrote:
| I don't know who downvotes you, but it has to be a really
| blind, one sided person(-s)
| sn_master wrote:
| Everyone nowadays is one-sided it seems. Its very sad..
| nix23 wrote:
| It's the perfect setup going extreme to one or the other
| side, and peoples are happy because they think it's the
| right way to go....truly sad.
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| And it is being decided. _This_ is how that looks. Parler
| has sued Amazon, and Amazon will presumably respond.
| Expecting Amazon to sue Parler to show that it has the
| right to drop it just isn 't realistic. IANAL, but I
| can't imagine how Amazon could show that it had standing
| in that situation.
| flatline wrote:
| If a service provider detects illegal activity taking
| place on their services, I assume the correct action is
| to contact the relevant authorities and suspend the
| activity until it gets straightened out. Which seems to
| be what has happened here. I don't know exactly what
| efforts were made to work with Parler in advance but I do
| believe there have been some, and Parler has refused to
| take action on their own behalf.
| malandrew wrote:
| > "encourage and incite violence."
|
| 98 examples is nothing. We dealt with an entire year of
| content on Facebook encouraging and inciting violence but
| it was okay because it was aligned ideologically with the
| powers that be.
|
| I personally lost track of how many people just in my own
| friend's list advocating for "punching nazis", where
| "nazis" is a generic term for "anyone I strongly disagree
| with politically". Heck, I saw multiple people post videos
| of violence against people they consider "nazis" and
| celebrating it.
|
| Personally, I'm 100% against the violence both last year
| and on Jan 6th, but it's amazing how egregious the double
| standard is between last year and Jan 6th.
| nix23 wrote:
| >98 examples of Parler posts that "encourage and incite
| violence."
|
| Just imagine how much that would be in Facebook numbers? I
| think we can block Facebook too, no?
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Does Facebook have a moderation policy in place that will
| remove these posts? Does Parler?
| nix23 wrote:
| >Does Parler
|
| That's not the point, i'm ~sure that illegal stuff is
| removed from parler too, and if not that's the Justice
| who should make the rules and NOT Amazon...like you know
| Facebook just made those moderation's after a justice
| ruling.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Isn't that exactly the point? Apple removed them because:
| _Parler has not taken adequate measures to address the
| proliferation of these threats to people's safety. We
| have suspended Parler from the App Store until they
| resolve these issues_
|
| And AWS said:
|
| "Recently, we've seen a steady increase in this violent
| content on your website, all of which violates our
| terms," the email reads. "It's clear that Parler does not
| have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of
| service."
|
| If they were removing the illegal content, then why did
| AWS say they don't have an effective process to remove
| it? If they can show that they already have effective
| moderation, then they should win their lawsuit against
| AWS and quickly be back online.
| nix23 wrote:
| >If they were removing the illegal content, then why did
| AWS say they don't have an effective process to remove
| it?
|
| Because you get a Sympathy-Star-Sticker in your book and
| Amazon is the good guy who try's to safe the United
| States, it's more Marketing then real fear being extreme
| right wing.
|
| BTW: Wanna buy a real Postage stamp from Hitler? No
| Problem:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/STRIKING-ORIGINAL-ANNIVERSARY-
| SEIZING...
|
| or a beautiful flag?
|
| https://www.amazon.ca/German-Imperial-Germany-Ensign-
| Flags/d...
|
| The original "Mein Kampf" without comments?
|
| https://www.amazon.ca/Mein-Kampf-Adolf-
| Hitler/dp/0395925037/...
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Those items may be distasteful, but are they illegal? I'm
| not aware of a prohibition on selling Nazi memorabilia in
| this country.
|
| On the other hand, inciting violence _is_ illegal:
|
| "by all the Patriots descending on Washington DC on #jan6
| ....come armed...."
|
| Another expletive-laced message posted the day before the
| riot warned: "To all our enemies high and low you want a
| war? Well you're asking for one...To the American people
| on the ground in DC today and all over this great nation,
| be prepared for anything."
| nix23 wrote:
| >"by all the Patriots descending on Washington DC on
| #jan6 ....come armed...."
|
| That's not violent per se, maybe the right wing is in
| fear of polar bears near the Capitol. Please don't get me
| wrong, but if you let big Marketplaces and not Justice
| make decisions whats right or wrong...well then that can
| go really fast the other way too.
| nicmccool wrote:
| That _is_ the point though. The reasons cited by AWS for
| their actions were due to violent posts and content
| moderation. When addressed with the issue Parler said
| they 'd use volunteers to proactively moderate violent
| posts, but AWS said that "nascent plant to use volunteers
| to promptly identify and remove dangerous content will
| not work in light of the rapidly growing number of
| violent posts".
| nix23 wrote:
| >remove dangerous content
|
| Really disappointed in HN right now, hacking youtube
| videos are dangerous too no? Content is not dangerous,
| peoples are.
| nicmccool wrote:
| Youtube has paid staff whose sole duty is to remove
| videos that violate their TOS. Parler does not. That is
| the distinction AWS used in there reasonings to terminate
| service.
| nix23 wrote:
| >TOS
|
| That's a private rule and with Amazon as big as it is, we
| need to have a discussion if a TOS is even legal, if you
| take a blind eye on that, nothing stands in the way that
| big company's take over everything, if you want such a
| world...well then welcome to cyberpunk.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| For large customers, the TOS is not just a click through
| agreement, it's actually signed as a part of an overall
| MSA.
|
| I don't see how you could argue that a TOS is not legal
| when both parties signed and agreed to it.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Facebook runs on AWS? No they have their own infra.
|
| Lesson of the day, if you're doing shady shit, own your
| own servers and stay off mine.
| nix23 wrote:
| >Facebook runs on AWS?
|
| That means you as a Infrastructure provider can jugge
| what normally justice will do, but when you have the
| money to run your own DC you can jump over that problems?
| Don't you see that this is the opposite of a free
| society? It does not matter if it's extreme right or
| left, Wikileaks, Wikipedia Pirate-bay or Sci-hub.
|
| BTW: Totally not right wing, but in a free an fair
| society justice should have the decision if a Service is
| illegal and NOT Market-providers like Amazon Google or
| Apple.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _That means you as a Infrastructure provider can jugge
| what normally justice will do, but when you have the
| money to run your own DC you can jump over that
| problems?_
|
| You can't since you still need to have an upstream
| internet provider. (or in the case of Facebook, access to
| internet exchange points). If Facebook was promoting
| illegal content, even if they host their own servers,
| they'd lose their internet connectivity.
| nix23 wrote:
| >If Facebook was promoting illegal content
|
| Did Parler promote illegal content? Again, Amazon is NOT
| a Court.
| Closi wrote:
| Why let pesky 'courts' and 'due process' get in the way
| of efficient ruling by capitalism and mega-corporations?
| Johnny555 wrote:
| What are you talking about? The courts are involved.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/11/tech/parler-amazon-
| lawsuit/in...
| Johnny555 wrote:
| Then it's a good thing it's being decided in a court.
|
| Which is what provides checks and balances, AWS says "You
| violated our ToS, we're cutting you off", "Parler sues
| and says 'No we didn't and here's why'".
|
| If Parler wins and can prove that they were unfairly
| targeted, then they can sue Amazon for damages. Which is
| what keeps Amazon from unfairly applying its ToS. And if
| they can demonstrate irreparable harm, then they can get
| an injunction forcing AWS to restore their services.
|
| But I think the best they could do is present monetary
| damages, which the court could decide AWS is able to pay.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Again, Amazon is NOT a Court.
|
| If you want entitlement to a court on the legality of
| content before getting cutoff from service, negotiate a
| contract that specifies that you can carry any legal
| content, and the other party must assume content is legal
| absent a determination by a court to the contrary.
|
| OTOH, that's not part of anyone's boilerplate, and adds a
| lot of potential cost, so expect to pay an _extremely
| hefty_ premium to get a business to agree to those terms.
| names_are_hard wrote:
| I don't know how the law currently works, but it seems
| reasonable to me that it should be the responsibility of
| the government to determine what's legal and what's not. I
| think Amazon would not be acting improperly if they alerted
| law enforcement that they suspect illegal activity and then
| waited for the authorities to issue an official order to
| take down the content (presumably based on a court order).
| I get that the current ToS allows Amazon to terminate the
| relationship unilaterally, but I don't think Amazon has to
| do that morally. And if they have to do that legally, I
| think it's fair to ask that the law be changed to allow
| private organizations selling a platform to not have to
| determine the legality of the actions of their customers.
| The FBI, police, and courts can do that.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| It is the responsibility of the government to determine
| what's legal and not, there's an entire court system that
| does just that. And Parler is using that system by filing
| a suit against AWS.
|
| But that doesn't mean that I can help someone load a body
| into his car, then tell police later "Well, I wasn't sure
| if he was legally killed or not, so I was just trying to
| help out, it's not my job to determine legality, I was
| going to come in later today and ask you guys about that.
| You can probably still catch him if you want to, I got
| his contact info: he said his name was John and his car
| said he lives in the Ukraine"
| imaginenore wrote:
| I can easily find 98 examples of inciting violence on
| Twitter or Facebook. Does it mean Google will delete their
| apps, Amazon will drop them from the servers? Of course
| not.
|
| Because it has nothing to do with some users calling for
| violence.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| AWS being able to shutdown a company is the fault of that
| company not having a multi-provider arch.
| MartinCron wrote:
| Parler chose to use AWS for their hosting. When you build
| your company on someone else's platform, you're explicitly
| giving them that market power.
| sn_master wrote:
| They needed 300-500 servers according to the CEO. There
| isn't much choice in the market when it comes to that kind
| of need, specially when you need to be hosted in the US
| because you're a political website. Imagine if they were
| hosted in Russia instead, they would have lost all their
| credibility.
| Blahah wrote:
| Of course there is! There are at least hundreds of
| hosting companies that can provide that as a service, and
| of course they can just buy their own servers. Nobody is
| obliged to make it easy for them to run their site.
| sn_master wrote:
| A 24 hour notice off AWS is more than just "not make it
| easy". It is a loud and clear political message.
| Blahah wrote:
| It's not political. It's an immediate refusal of service
| to a client that is clearly causing commercial harm to
| AWS. They have no obligation to host Parler!
| sn_master wrote:
| Are you seriously expecting anyone to believe booting
| Parler off from Google, Apple and Amazon all in the same
| day was not a political move?
| Blahah wrote:
| Yes. It's a PR/business reputation move.
| Daishiman wrote:
| Thousands of companies host 300-500 servers on a couple
| of racks in some data center in the Midwest.
|
| There is not reason at all to have your content hosted in
| the US if you felt its legislators or IT providers aren't
| up to par to your idea of what free speech represents.
| Credibility? Yeah, seems that the crediblity issues
| weren't exactly about the hosting provider.
| sn_master wrote:
| Look at their growth curve, they weren't planning from
| the beginning on that. I am sure they would have gone
| with their own DC if they did.
|
| The legislative and judicial system didn't say anything
| about Parler, and that's the core of the problem. Big
| tech acted by themselves to appease the new king.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Which is both their right and prerogative. Fascists
| aren't a protected class.
| sn_master wrote:
| In this Great country, everyone is a "protected class"
| unless a court determines otherwise. It is their "right"
| to kick anyone off because of their overly broad Terms
| and Conditions, but they have no right to label anyone as
| a criminal.
| MartinCron wrote:
| You have the notion of "protected class" backwards.
| Everyone in this country has the right to equal
| protection under the law, but private companies are
| allowed to discriminate except in cases of protected
| class.
|
| AWS can say "we don't want Parler as a customer" but they
| cannot say "we don't serve black people on our platform"
| as race is a protected class while being Parler is not.
| karmasimida wrote:
| > Amazon has too much market power if it can shut down
| another company at the push of a button for something that
| isn't illegal
|
| Amazon is leading Cloud yes, but it stands at 40% market
| share at best. Azure/GCP are pretty competent alternatives,
| though I am not sure if they would not do the same as AWS
| (probably yes)
|
| The wider impaction to me, is that AWS is setting some
| precedent, and many people are not fully comfortable with it,
| and I think it will haunt AWS for a long time to come.
| chr1 wrote:
| Was Parler blocked because Amazon did not like it, or because
| Democrats do not like it, and they have full control of
| government, and can pass arbitrary laws e.g. to break up
| Amazon?
|
| Edit: an unfairly flagged comment in reply to this says > Why
| would democrats break up Amazon, when it helps them in
| banning the republicans? That will not happen.
|
| That's exactly my point, this is a form of lobbying to stay
| on good side of the government.
| imaginenore wrote:
| Why would democrats break up Amazon, when it helps them in
| banning the republicans? That will not happen.
| [deleted]
| grahamburger wrote:
| I am optimistic that we won't tumble down the slippery slope.
| We do need to be careful about it, though, and watch for
| threats to democracy from all angles. IMO it wouldn't be such a
| bad thing if this instance weakened the market dominance of SV
| and gave room in the market for new entrants. Hosting providers
| outside U.S. jurisdiction, for example, or decentralized social
| networks.
| jounker wrote:
| Don't run a social network designed to host right wing
| extremists, and you should be fine.
| nodamage wrote:
| I am not sure why people are treating this like it's new? There
| is already a massive list of things you can't do on AWS, for
| example running a spam operation, pirated software trading
| site, drug trading site, etc. Is it really so surprising that
| this list also includes running a site where violent attacks
| are planned?
| ehsankia wrote:
| It's not too different from how you should diversify your
| income as a Youtuber, especially if you make content about
| controversial topics. They knew that their platform was going
| to host controversial content, I'm honestly surprised how
| little redundancy they had planned for here.
| gnicholas wrote:
| It appears there is a business opportunity to (re)create
| infrastructure for use by companies/individuals that have been
| banned from the mainstream platforms.
|
| I'm sure such a platform would be despised by many in the
| mainstream, and most mainstream companies would not consider
| using them because customers would boycott them if they did.
| But for companies whose customers are primarily on the right,
| the cost/benefit could be favorable. If there are enough such
| companies, someone could build a business that caters to them.
|
| I don't know anything about how complex it would be to set up
| companies to replace AWS, Stripe, etc., but I imagine that at
| least some of these services will be offered (probably at
| higher cost, due to lower scale/efficiencies) within the next
| year or two.
|
| Even my liberal friends think that the de-platforming has gone
| too far -- and the Trump presidency hasn't even officially
| ended yet. Most thought that the companies would wait until
| after Trump was no longer President and then ban him on the
| grounds that his behavior was only previously allowed because
| he was a political figure.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I'm wondering -- this has been downvoted, but the replies all
| seem to agree that the comment is true/reasonable. Am I
| misunderstanding the comments, or are there other thoughts on
| why this is an objectionable observation?
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| The two big issues that come to mind with this are DNS and
| SSL certs. AFIK both are really hard spaces to become a
| "provider", so you end up being reliant on the existing
| providers to do business with you. Sure there are
| decentralized solutions to these problems, but none of them
| really let you operate in the "normal" internet space...
| caseysoftware wrote:
| I've been kicking around how to do something like that
| because you need to consider all the layers.
|
| On the app side, you need neutral phones/devices and the app
| distribution to get apps out there.
|
| On the hosting side, you need the hosting itself (cloud or
| colo), the DNS and registrars, the SSL to secure it, SMS or
| emails for verification & resets, and probably a few others.
|
| On the financial side, you need payment processing and the
| banking system behind it. That's one of the hardest because
| even if _you_ can handle it, your customers have to be able
| to send you money from their bank.
|
| All of those (and other components) have been cut
| off/disrupted for various organizations in the last year or
| two.
| SiliconMage wrote:
| The end result will probably be two separate frameworks
| distanced from each other where each side is free to babble
| away in their echo chambers as much as they want.
| gnicholas wrote:
| We are certainly moving in that direction, unfortunately.
| grogenaut wrote:
| I'm sure that alternate platforms will pop up. Parler is an
| alternate platform. However, how good will those platforms
| be? There are already many clouds, and a lot of them have
| trouble competing. Stripe also has many competitors, but few
| of them are that good.
| GCA10 wrote:
| I'd expect the bar to remain in exactly the same place.
|
| AWS has continued to host the National Enquirer, even after
| that publication dug deep into Jeff Bezos's personal life. Said
| coverage perhaps accelerated Bezos's divorce, which cost him
| $30 billion in stock, as part of the settlement with his ex-
| wife. ($30b is 2019 valuation; it's much bigger now.)
|
| If Amazon/AWS will quietly endure a $30b+ hit to its founder's
| wealth, without pulling the plug, I'd say the cloud-business
| risk you've identified should be one of the smallest stressors
| in your life.
| Nuzzerino wrote:
| > You needed literal storming of the Capitol and a platform
| seemingly specifically targeted at those people for this to
| happen.
|
| I fail to see how Parler should be expected to be responsible
| for the behavior of some users that share a demographic and
| political alignment with a group that stormed the Capitol. Was
| the planning for it done via Parler? Was it not Twitter where
| the announcement by Trump actually happened?
|
| The bar is already low my friend. This is nothing but an excuse
| for big tech to wield its trust effect to shut down potential
| competitors.
|
| If big tech believes that social media companies should be held
| accountable for its users' actions, then they should support
| the repeal of section 230, which would effectively have the
| same effect, except with the additional protections under the
| justice system. Why is it suddenly okay when big tech does the
| same without due process?
|
| Rules for thee, not for me.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Best mitigation is to involve as few 3rd parties as possible.
| Find more obscure allies in the space who are not motivated
| (controlled) by public perception and political gains. Consider
| building your own tools and technologies to replace 3rd
| parties.
|
| For instance, the load balancing and DDOS protection products
| sold by Cloudflare are not the effects of some ancient mystical
| artifact that we could never hope to emulate. These are simple
| network engineering practices that can be replicated by any
| experienced IT staff. Sure, you might not be able to mitigate a
| theoretical 100+ terabit DDOS attack, but is this actually a
| problem in practice for your business? Even if you have
| ridiculous capacity, at a certain point you would still have to
| defer to ISPs, law enforcement and other external measures in
| order to restore sane operations.
|
| Certainly, there is no perfect solution. But, the more of your
| stack you have under your exclusive physical control the
| better.
| lanevorockz wrote:
| BLM caused the deaths of over 80 people and nobody deplatformed
| Facebook or Twitter. This is obviously about the belief that
| republicans are not human.
| hintymad wrote:
| A nuance: AWS de-platformed Parler for its insufficient
| moderation on violence-inciting discussion, not for existence
| of such discussion. Not that I agree with or disagree with
| AWS decision, but it's worth having a nuanced discussion. A
| larger problem I see in the US is that many, if not all,
| nuanced discussions are considered evil by the left or by the
| right.
| chess_buster wrote:
| Sure buddy.
| TomBombadildoze wrote:
| citation needed
| crististm wrote:
| Taken from The Book: "don't lend money to someone more powerful
| than you!". I would say this is a business failure. They should
| have prepared for that and they did not.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Why would the bar be lower in the future? This action is really
| not something any company wants to do. I expect the bar to
| remain nearly the same.
| drieddust wrote:
| These companies are sucking up to their new democratic
| overloads so make sure you do not anger them.
|
| Taliban have a twitter account, Ex PM of Malasia have openly
| justified Paris beheading, Iran's supremo calls for Jew
| genocide, and last but not the least China calls their Uighur
| detention camps as "reeducation" with zero consequences.
|
| So yes plan if you want but cost of executing the plan might be
| high enough to put you out of business.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _Taliban have a twitter account_ "
|
| President Trump came to an agreement with the Taliban, so
| somebody seems to think they're legitimate.
| (https://www.reuters.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-usa-
| int/...)
|
| " _Ex PM of Malasia have openly justified Paris beheading_ "
|
| Which comment Twitter removed.
| (https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/a-bigot-without-
| principl...)
| cactus2093 wrote:
| > What are the best mitigations here, both technical and
| social? Vocally side with the popular issues, or try to stay
| completely out of them, to try to avoid becoming a target
| (e.g., social media presence)?
|
| For now, don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic election
| and install an illegitimate government. Seems like a pretty
| easy thing to stay clear of.
|
| I get the concern you're expressing, but not everything is a
| slippery slope. This went so far beyond a "popular social issue
| of the day", as you admitted in your comment. IMO it's worth
| saving this outrage & concern for if and when something that is
| more genuinely a popular social issue causes AWS to take down
| sites. There were surely lots candidates for that earlier this
| year with a lot of the other protests that went on, were there
| any instances of sites taken down then? (I'm genuinely asking
| btw, I didn't hear of any but if there were then I think that
| is a much more appropriate place to start this conversation
| from. Certainly people have been fired from their jobs due to
| cancel culture but I don't know of anyone being shut off of all
| tech platforms).
| roenxi wrote:
| It sounds very reasonable up until attempting to identify
| what, objectively, is the bar to set business policy. Twitter
| literally claims that "To all of those who have asked, I will
| not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th." was the
| straw that broke the camels back [0]. That isn't an objective
| bar.
|
| Context which "everyone knows" is a political question - a
| highly political question. If AWS happens to have a similar
| standard to Twitter then the only way for a business to
| figure out if it is in breacfh is objectively, and AWS just
| showed it can pull the plug in days with apparently no
| warning.
|
| [0] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspen
| sio...
| jandrese wrote:
| Maybe it was the part where he directed an angry mob to the
| steps of the Capitol building?
| 0xEFF wrote:
| > Twitter literally claims that "To all of those who have
| asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January
| 20th." was the straw that broke the camels back [0]. That
| isn't an objective bar.
|
| When President Trump published this tweet, he knew full
| well extremists are actively planning to attack the
| inauguration on January 20th.
|
| There isn't a clear, objective bar in this kind of
| situation. Jack Dorsey, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Mark
| Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos each decided for themselves if
| they were willing to stand by and allow Trump and Parler to
| continue along the path of inciting violence on January
| 20th.
| IanCal wrote:
| That is a wild misrepresentation of the facts.
|
| That was the second of two tweets, that they are taking
| together. This was the other
|
| "The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me,
| AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a
| GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be
| disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or
| form!!!"
|
| They explain the context and how these tweets are being
| interpreted.
| ncallaway wrote:
| > Twitter literally claims that "To all of those who have
| asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January
| 20th.
|
| Well, no, they didn't claim that. They claimed the two
| tweets, taken together, were the straw that broke the
| camel's back.
|
| And, yes, I think you could reasonably make the claim that
| the tweets were innocuous if you throw out the context of
| the President inciting a violent insurrection on Congress.
| But, we don't have to blind ourselves to that prior
| context. Given it, and given the way a number of people
| received those comments and have been actively organizing
| for violence around the inauguration since then, it doesn't
| seem to be to be a close call.
| cle wrote:
| These are social issues, there is no clearly demarcated
| "objective" bar. Don't make the mistake of thinking
| policies and laws are objective--they aren't. They're
| interpreted and applied within the social context of the
| times.
|
| This doesn't mean we should throw our hands up in
| nihilistic defeat, it just means these issues are
| complicated and fuzzy and we should be okay with that.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| > For now, don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic
| election and install an illegitimate government.
|
| I agree 100%, viking hat guy should definitely have his AWS
| account terminated.
|
| Now, let's talk about Russiagate, how the FBI knew it was a
| fabrication of the opposition party to distract from a
| campaign scandal, and how we were dragged all the way through
| an impeachment process in an attempt to install an
| illegitimate government.
| FentanylFloyd wrote:
| you are not supposed to mention this, your hackernews and
| aws account should be terminated for wrongthink
|
| and don't forget: BLM "protests" were "fiery, but mostly
| peaceful" https://i.kym-
| cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/035/101/CNN...
| Closi wrote:
| > For now, don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic
| election and install an illegitimate government. Seems like a
| pretty easy thing to stay clear of.
|
| I don't think it is though - the point is _who_ decides if
| the democratic election was fair?
|
| What happens in a foreign country if their government decides
| the election isn't fair? Should people be silenced?
|
| Or is it Amazon's job now to work out if worldwide elections
| are fair and enforce action?
|
| I think the problem is either you are a neutral platform, or
| you hold too much power.
| cycop wrote:
| The platform being used for organizing potential mass
| murder of targeted groups. If the screenshots are correct
| of what I have seen then AWS had no choice. They would have
| been liable if something really bad happened and was made
| aware of this before it happened. Parler has no monitoring
| of this activity and that is why everyone shut them down
| once it was exposed.
| Tepix wrote:
| > the point is who decides if the democratic election was
| fair?
|
| That one is easy: it was approximately 60 different courts
| of law that laughed the "evidence" of fraud out of the room
| eloff wrote:
| It's not that easy. If we're talking about an election in
| Venezuela, the courts would also laugh accusations of
| election rigging out of the room.
|
| To be clear, I fully side with the U.S. courts here. What
| I'm saying though is governments and officials lie, you
| can't always just trust the official story.
|
| If parler were used for inciting civil disorder in
| Venezuela over the election result and the government
| comes to AWS and says shut them down, what do they do?
|
| Now suddenly they're the arbitrators of what is true in
| the world.
|
| I don't want to get too hypothetical here, because I
| think this time it was pretty black and white.
| yks wrote:
| For some reason this modern gaslighting rhetoric about
| how the truth is unachievable is used only to move the
| society into the darker places, not to make it fairer and
| better.
|
| Yes, a single person cannot reasonably confirm that
| election was fair in their individual capacity, but
| hopefully they can see the consequences of deciding the
| elections based on who has a bigger gun. It is strictly a
| darker place to be in.
| Closi wrote:
| 100% agree - And the problem is that this isn't a
| 'hypothetical' situation.
|
| Amazon and these large players will _absolutely_ be asked
| by governments around the world to intervene in similar
| situations. Sometimes the fraud will be false, but
| sometimes it will be real - that 's the world. Is it now
| Amazon's job to be the world election supervisor and
| arbiter of truth and shut down dissenting speech?
|
| And can we trust these companies to act as neutral
| arbiters of the truth? Well the easy answer is absolutely
| not - If you look at Google Maps from China, Taiwan is
| part of the country!
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > who decides if the democratic election was fair?
|
| The several states, of which all 50 had certified their
| votes well in advance of January 6th. Heck, I wouldn't be
| surprised if most of the votes being counted were even cast
| in public.
| hchz wrote:
| The United States Government decided it was fair, in many
| administrative and legal venues, across the country. Many
| Republican officials and judges affirmed it, even under
| intense and illegal pressure from the President and his
| cadre.
|
| This platform was used to coordinate an insurrection
| against the United States Government, and refused to act
| against those doing so.
|
| The severity of insurrection in US legal code is such that
| the military may be deployed domestically, and those
| service members who abetted it are guilty of an offense
| whose primary punishment in the UCMJ is death.
|
| This isn't just another political issue. The most
| existential issue facing the state is the integrity of the
| Constitution.
| Closi wrote:
| > The United States Government decided it was fair, in
| many administrative and legal venues, across the country.
| Many Republican officials and judges affirmed it, even
| under intense and illegal pressure from the President and
| his cadre.
|
| So if the Russian government and Russian courts decide
| their election was fair and just, should Amazon shut down
| any websites which counter that viewpoint?
|
| Because that's the precedent we are presumably setting.
| hitpointdrew wrote:
| >For now, don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic
| election and install an illegitimate government. Seems like a
| pretty easy thing to stay clear of.
|
| Parler didn't do this, it's users did. Vastly different
| things.
| disgrunt wrote:
| Which has always been Twitter's defense when similar things
| happened on their platform. Shouldn't 230 apply here?
| creatorbytes wrote:
| That's quite the straw man. We should separate an issue of
| moderation and actual motives of the platform itself.
|
| Did the platform have algorithms to make pro-capital storming
| posts ascend higher than other equally engaged posts?
|
| Did the owner/company make a call to violence?
|
| Did their platform spike in popularity in such a short time
| frame, they were unable to moderate to the same degree as
| other platforms? (Even Google struggles with YT moderation,
| though I understand the volume of content is widely
| different)
|
| It's obvious there exist political ties to this. Sure, have
| Parler respond to a congressional hearing just as other tech
| companies have had to do. But removing them from all these
| services overnight, albeit technically legal (so far), reeks
| of anti trust.
|
| No matter political affiliation, the antitrust precedent set,
| if unpunished, will pave the way for greater censorship.
|
| This seems like a similar level to price fixing - multiple
| companies, competing even, coordinating to cancel
| competition.
|
| This is a new issue we have in the digital age. It should be
| handled in the Supreme Court.
| Blahah wrote:
| It really isn't a straw man.
|
| If clients or customers bring bad publicity to a company
| they can refuse them service. They can in fact refuse
| service for any reason that isn't discriminatory in many
| jurisdictions.
|
| Censorship has nothing to do with this. Any person can host
| a website from home, pay for a dedicated line, build their
| own datacenter, find a colo, host on a decentralised
| network, etc.
|
| Amazon is under no obligation to provide service to Parler.
| They are not censored by Amazon refusing them as customers.
|
| It's also not relevant to antitrust, literally at all.
|
| A far more dangerous precedent would be compelling
| companies to provide service to hate groups and terrorists.
| adrr wrote:
| Parler wasn't deleted because of public pressure alone. It
| was deleted because of AWS customers that threatened to
| leave. Last thing large enterprise customers want is to be
| caught up in is a controversy. Amazon made a business
| decision. No tech executive wants to explain to their CEO
| that they got boycotted due to a tech vendor choice. If AWs
| didn't kick off Parler, the boycott of AWS based customers
| was coming.
|
| No company should be forced to lose money.
| zachrose wrote:
| > We should separate an issue of moderation and actual
| motives of the platform itself
|
| Why though? On some level in seems impossible to make a
| distinction "from the outside," and I'm not sure it should
| matter that a decision was made by a person (probably
| following an Excel spreadsheet) or software.
| RspecMAuthortah wrote:
| > For now, don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic
| election and install an illegitimate government. Seems like a
| pretty easy thing to stay clear of.
|
| Ohhhh. You hear that? Overturning a fair democratic election.
| Where was the same argument when the whole Russia narrative
| played out - including intelligence agencies trying to "wire"
| the sitting president and sending agents to his national
| security advisor's residence to frame him? And trying to plot
| 25th amendment. And the whole 3years subsequent to that
| trying to find "collusion".
|
| Also there is no evidence the founders of Parler were
| actively trying to sabotage the election and install
| illegitimate president. Some rouge users decided to co-
| ordinate through apps like Parler and FB. Same applies for
| FB.
| JakeTheAndroid wrote:
| If we want to continue down a path of honest discussion, at
| no point did people who firmly believed Trump was guilty of
| collusion with Russia devolve into storming a government
| building.
|
| And, the Russia topic by and large never called into
| question the legitimacy of the ballots cast, attempting to
| disenfranchise voters. The Russia narrative followed a path
| of legal investigation into questionable situations. Trump
| did not get impeached for the outcomes of the Mueller
| report. Dems did not force their way into political
| buildings. They (at least the mainstream ones) never called
| for violence.
|
| So, it seems that the left, in the end, did believe it was
| a fair election in terms of ballot numbers, and never
| suggested that the democratic election be overturned.
|
| The last part of your statement says something entirely
| different than the first part. I don't think anyone is
| claiming that Dems haven't worked hard to undermine Trump
| during his time in office. Just like I don't think anyone
| claimed Republicans weren't working to undermine Obama when
| they took control of the Senate. That's politics, good or
| bad. But that does not correlate to a belief that a fair
| election should be overturned.
|
| Not really an apt comparison in my opinion.
| chess_buster wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mueller_report
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| > not everything is a slippery slope
|
| From a risk management perspective, this does not seem like a
| safe assumption to make. The DailyStormer got "canceled" by
| vendors for not even trying to moderate content that actively
| promoted violence (among other horrible things). Now Parlor
| gets "canceled" by vendors for not doing a good enough job
| trying to moderate content promoting violence. The bar for
| getting "canceled" is already moving down and honestly any
| company that is hosting user-driven content needs to have a
| plan for how to make sure they stay below that bar. Part of
| that plan should be projected scenarios about how low the bar
| will go....
|
| Part of what is really dicey here too is that the result of
| getting this calculation wrong is basically annihilation for
| your service (unless you think you can operate without "every
| vendor from text message services to email providers to our
| lawyers"). The stakes are really high!
|
| (Edited to fix my 'raise-the-bar' analogy)
| yks wrote:
| I think things are pretty clear cut, if you want to start a
| service to obviously harbor fascist user-driven content,
| then yes, prepare to be cut off from the mainstream
| vendors. DailyStormer and Parler are explicitly those types
| of services.
|
| It is a bit disingenuous to suggest that because Parler is
| down, "mom and pop" websites with comment section attached
| now need to lawyer up.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| > It is a bit disingenuous to suggest that because Parler
| is down, "mom and pop" websites with comment section
| attached now need to lawyer up.
|
| This is definitely a straw-man, but at the same time, if
| your website hosts user-supplied content and you don't
| have a rock-solid strategy for moderating it, then yeah
| you probably should be worried. (Though the spammers will
| probably take down your site long before AWS...)
| rirarobo wrote:
| I disagree, you don't need a "rock-solid strategy for
| moderating" "user-supplied content", you just need a user
| base that is by and large not inciting violence,
| particularly against government officials.
|
| If I run some hobbyist forum where say 1 in 1000 users is
| posting hate speech or calling for violence, as long as I
| have less-than-rock-solid moderation that can clean up
| some of their posts and ban the worst offenders based on
| user reports, I wouldn't be too worried. It's also in my
| interest to keep the community healthy.
|
| Now, if 20% or 50% of my users are posting hate speech
| and calling for violence, yeah I would be worried, but I
| would be less worried about moderation, and more worried
| about why my hobby attracts extremists. Might call for
| some self reflection.
| user22 wrote:
| Just a thought....
|
| Maybe it doesn't attract extremists. Maybe extremists
| just happened to randomly pick your site as the latest
| site to use for communication.
|
| Just theorizing here, but assume that instead of hosting
| their own content, web sites with comments are hijacked
| to host extremists propaganda/plans/violent event, with a
| pointer to the next web site to use (not IF) but when the
| current one gets shut down.
|
| The only way to avoid this is to moderate the comments
| before they are allowed to be displayed. And I'm betting
| there are a thousand+ web sites that are run by amateurs
| where this is the last thing on their minds.
|
| Hopefully the fact that scaling and searching would be
| impossible makes this a non-issue.
| b0bb1z3r0 wrote:
| winning argument right here
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| It sounds like you have done your risk analysis and
| settled on an balance of risk and moderation effort that
| is acceptable to you. That sounds fair to me.
|
| > Now, if 20% or 50% of my users are posting hate speech
| and calling for violence, yeah I would be worried, but I
| would be less worried about moderation, and more worried
| about why my hobby attracts extremists. Might call for
| some self reflection.
|
| LOL! I think this is actually the right take! Definitely
| also applies to your social network...
| tlholaday wrote:
| No, the lesson of Parler is not that you need to have
|
| > ... a rock-solid strategy for moderating ...
|
| The lesson is you need to have a rock-solid `policy` that
| content which advocates violence is impermissible.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| Unfortunately I cannot reference Parlor's actual
| Community Guidelines
| (https://legal.parler.com/documents/guidelines.pdf) since
| the site is down for some reason. :)
|
| However, based on what is described here
| (https://theconversation.com/parler-what-you-need-to-
| know-abo...) `there are policies against "fighting words"
| and "threats of harm". This includes "a threat of or
| advocating for violation against an individual or
| group".`
|
| Based on recent examples of Parlor posts it seems like
| the Parlor moderators were not adequately enforcing this
| policy.
| threeseed wrote:
| Pretty sure Parlor had no official moderators.
|
| Just the community self-moderating themselves.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _a rock-solid strategy for moderating it_ "
|
| You mean, like Facebook and Twitter?
| danans wrote:
| > The DailyStormer got "canceled" by vendors for not even
| trying to moderate content that actively promoted violence
| (among other horrible things). Now Parlor gets "canceled"
| by vendors for not doing a good enough job trying to
| moderate content promoting violence.
|
| There is no daylight between the the Daily Stormer and
| Parler with respect to their willingness to distribute
| content that promotes far right violence, and similarly
| that being their shared founding motivation.
|
| Just different branding.
| hinkley wrote:
| As someone who is in theory trying to write software for
| community-sourced documentation and advice, I've been
| dragging my heels for years watching things play out on
| reddit and facebook and twitter and now these buffoons
| and I just don't know if I'm up to the task. My best
| defense seems to be trying to keep the niche as small as
| possible and still be worth my while to do the work, and
| to be perfectly honest, as 'realistic' as I like to be,
| saying "keep it small" to myself drains quite a bit of
| motivation out of me.
| hchz wrote:
| What's the calculation you need to make?
|
| Don't provide an unmoderated online platform for neo-nazis
| preparing for genocide.
|
| I didn't finish my math major but this seems
| straightforward.
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| > From a risk management perspective, this does not seem
| like a safe assumption to make. The DailyStormer got
| "canceled" by vendors for not even trying to moderate
| content that actively promoted violence (among other
| horrible things). Now Parlor gets "canceled" by vendors for
| not doing a good enough job trying to moderate content
| promoting violence.
|
| If you do a sufficiently poor job, you might as well not
| even be trying at all. Especially if you court the content
| as a growth strategy.
|
| Everyone's free to manage their risks however they please,
| but I personally have no less confidence in AWS than I had
| before this event. I have updated my understanding of their
| decision heuristic as it applies to kicking people off
| their service. But the probability of me or any company I'd
| manage running afoul of it is far less than the chance of
| getting struck by lightning.
| wesleywt wrote:
| As the 'bar' goes 'lower' the reason for other vendors to
| refuse your money becomes less clear. It is quite clear the
| Parlor is not someone you want on the books.
| Applejinx wrote:
| I'm not convinced Parler is meaningfully different from the
| DailyStormer in this regard. In fact, I would say
| DailyStormer is plausibly less capable of promoting
| violence and terrorism than Parler is, and this shows in
| current events. In terms of effectiveness and threat level,
| Parler is clearly greater.
| jmull wrote:
| > Now Parlor gets "canceled" by vendors for not doing a
| good enough job trying to moderate content promoting
| violence.
|
| Parler got canceled for something a lot worse than the
| Daily Stormer.
| Daishiman wrote:
| No, parlor wasn't even doing a "good enough job". It wasn't
| doing _anything_. It's financial backers supported
| everything with regards to its users going into a violent
| frenzy.
|
| There really is nothing contentious here, unless you feel
| that if you know that a group is organizing in your
| platform with the intent of staging a coup then you're in
| your right to just let them go about it.
| larrywright wrote:
| There are lots of horrible things on Parler from what
| I've seen (I don't have an account, I've just seen screen
| shots). The most egregious example was the post from
| Trump attorney Lin Wood calling for Pence to be executed
| by firing squad. It was up for days, and only taken down
| when this all blew up.
| eznzt wrote:
| I find it hard to understand why that should not be
| allowed to be said. I know it's in extremely bad taste,
| but still...
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| You're wondering why making threats of violence against a
| person or trying to rally a credible threat against them
| isn't permitted under the first?
| eznzt wrote:
| I would have to see the exact text, but the way it was
| mentioned up in this thread it didn't sound like either
| of those.
| a_conservative wrote:
| He didn't call for him to be executed: https://i.dailymai
| l.co.uk/1s/2021/01/02/06/37509512-9105875-...
| marz0 wrote:
| What is he proposing then?
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErGzmjYWMAI_POS?format=jpg&na
| me=...
| eznzt wrote:
| Ah, so it's a load of bullshit. As I imagined.
| vetinari wrote:
| It does neither incite or produce imminent lawless
| action, nor likely to incite or produce such action.
|
| Twitter contains worse.
| pixl97 wrote:
| No, it's a violent call to action in front of an angry
| mob willing to commit violence.
| myko wrote:
| Well, it's illegal in the US for one:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/871
|
| There's also the fact that an angry mob overran the US
| Capitol while chanting "Hang Mike Pence" as a direct
| result of Lin and Trump's posts/comments
| lambdaphagy wrote:
| I hope no one ever posts a horrible thing like calling
| for the death of a politician on twitter.
| lettergram wrote:
| For reference, this was on Twitter & Parler. Twitter
| didn't take him down for at least a week.
|
| Similarly, I've seen people regularly call for violence
| on all sides and not be removed from Twitter.
|
| The reality is that the moderators are overwhelmed, etc.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Too busy to moderate Trump's inner circle.
| clowd wrote:
| Twitter, though, at least _has_ moderators, and makes an
| effort to remove threatening content from its service.
| The speed and efficacy of Twitter 's abuse team is a
| topic for debate, but they have (and enforce) policy.
|
| Parler famously had no such policy, that's why it was so
| attractive to the insurrectionists. The CEO, even _after_
| January 6th, went on record that he didn 't feel it was
| Parler's responsibility to moderate user-generated
| content at all. Whatever last-minute olive branch they
| tried extending to AWS regarding a potential future
| volunteer moderator system obviously wasn't sufficient
| for Amazon.
| threeseed wrote:
| Here are some examples:
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBxXcAAuTkC?format=jpg&na
| me=...
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBuXYAAB4y2?format=jpg&na
| me=...
|
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgB3XIAcffGC?format=jpg&na
| me=...
| rrose wrote:
| and i think a key point about this particular example is
| that Lin Wood is a very visible public figure. This
| wasn't a single crazy comment buried in a long thread
| that a moderator could have missed. If there was any
| good-faith effort by Parler to moderate content, it would
| have caught the Lin Wood rant.
| weaksauce wrote:
| To extend on that... the entire premise of parler was
| that everyone was censoring them too much(for similar
| calls for violence) so they needed a platform that was
| immune from that. well when your entire premise is flawed
| from the start it's not a stretch to see that they would
| be targeted from that like stormfront.
| bosswipe wrote:
| No, Parler was doing plenty of moderation. They actively
| suppressed opposing left-wing view points. It was a pure
| far-right agitattion machine.
| paganel wrote:
| > It's financial backers supported everything with
| regards to its users going into a violent frenzy.
|
| The financial backers of Facebook supported the company a
| lot through its enabling of the Rohingya genocide. But,
| then again, the Rohingya are not white, nor Christian,
| and they don't live in a country that can be a potential
| source of expats (like the UK or Australia, nice, good
| countries), only of immigrants.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Doesn't sound like the bar is moving to me from your
| examples. Not moderating content promoting violence is a
| decent bar.
|
| > any company that is hosting user-driven content needs to
| have a plan for how to make sure they stay below that bar.
|
| Yes... They need to moderate out content that promotes
| violence. This is a thing that they should do.
| jaredsohn wrote:
| A nit - I think your high/low bar metaphor was backwards. A
| high bar means that standard is more strict while a low bar
| means it is less strict.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| Ha, you are right! Fixed.
| mvc wrote:
| Funnily enough I see remarkably few people using the
| comments on my Strava feed to organize an insurrection.
| yongjik wrote:
| > The bar for getting "canceled" is already moving up ...
|
| Eh I'm not so sure about that? I mean, "Did your userbase
| activately participate in a plot to storm the Capitol and
| potentially take lawmakers and the VP of the State as
| hostages (or worse)?" is an _awfully_ high bar to clear.
| burrows wrote:
| And if my hypothetical platform is decentralized to the
| extent that I can't top-down censor content, what then?
| klmadfejno wrote:
| That is simply a different question
| bigfudge wrote:
| Exactly. I already had that factored into my prior for
| whether my business was going to get cancelled by Amazon.
| I'd actually expect to fade a court for knowingly
| facilitating the shit on Parler.
| hinkley wrote:
| The result of doing nothing is that in 15 years, the US
| becomes Germany, pre-WW2.
|
| You can think of it as vendors getting 'canceled' for
| progressively less severe offenses.
|
| Or.
|
| You can think of it as people waking up to offenses that
| have been allowed to go unchallenged for way too fucking
| long. People 'waking up' or no longer keeping their heads
| down being the result of the current administration
| transitioning to a Lame Duck status.
|
| The price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance. Yes, you should
| absolutely be actively paying attention. No static rule
| will allow you, or me, or that guy over there to go back to
| not paying attention.
| riversflow wrote:
| >in 15 years, the U.S. becomes Germany, pre-WW2
|
| >the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
|
| The irony of censoring people being, "the price of
| freedom".
|
| Serious question, why do you think that disenfranchising
| groups of their ability to communicate online is going to
| prevent social strife and violence instead of
| intensifying it? Banning theDonald didn't help, the Daily
| Stormer being banished from the web didn't change
| anything, kicking so many reactionaries off of Twitter
| that they went off to make Gab didn't help, and
| destroying Parler and kicking Trump off social media
| isn't going to help.
|
| How is silencing a group that feels oppressed going to
| help anything?
|
| This, "conservatives are turning into literal nazis"
| narrative is extremely toxic to public discourse and
| needs to completely stop.
| peeters wrote:
| People need to stop hiding behind the first amendment and
| "but censorship" as a way of allowing democracy-
| threatening activity. Speech has ALWAYS had limitations.
| You cannot yell "fire" in a movie theatre. You cannot
| publish falsehoods that harm a person's reputation. You
| cannot reveal classified information. You cannot imitate
| a police officer. Why is "you cannot incite violent
| terrorism" suddenly controversial?
| LargeWu wrote:
| You know what's even more toxic? Literal Nazis and
| fascits, the ranks of which have been, if not growing,
| then clearly emboldened.
|
| This group "feels oppressed" because they are not able to
| exert their will to oppress others. This is not a morally
| defensible position. So please, spare us the gaslighting
| about the level of discourse. It has the same energy as
| an abusive husband saying "Look what you made me do!" The
| discourse has become toxic because fascism is toxic.
| bigfudge wrote:
| But the thing is, have you actually read the stuff on
| Parker this is about? These people are actively inciting
| violence. Their leaders are encouraging violent assaults
| on democratic institutions. They really aren't that
| different from what happened in Germany in the late 20s
| and 30s. Whether they also come to resemble Germany in
| the late 30s is irrelevant.
| mcguire wrote:
| Clearly, vendors should be made to continue doing
| business with (some appropriately chosen set of?)
| clients, because that would be different than post-1933
| intrawar Germany...how?
| hinkley wrote:
| By 'result of doing nothing' I mean vendors turning a
| blind eye to their clients, instead of dumping them on
| the side of the road without even the courtesy of slowing
| the car down first.
|
| I would have thought that was pretty clear from context.
| michannne wrote:
| >You can think of it as people waking up to offenses that
| have been allowed to go unchallenged for way too fucking
| long
|
| "People" is a general term, "offense" is a relative term.
| What you may consider an offense, I might consider a
| complement. Additionally, what you consider an offense
| today, you might not do so tomorrow. There is no such
| thing as a static set of provisions that can handle all
| cases of immorality across all of time and satisfy all
| people.
|
| >The price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance
|
| The price of freedom is nothing, the price of consequence
| is eternal vigilance. The only reason you would need to
| be alerted if someone commits an offense you deem
| immoral, is so that they can be punished for the offense.
| You can't reverse an act that someone committed, but sure
| if you have constant oversight of their actions you can
| definitely punish them as you see fit. Law is synonymous
| with punishment, but it is punishment that applies
| universally to all parties, as opposed to the Terms of
| Service applied by modern corporations, which (by design)
| can be applied to whomever and can be ignored for
| whomever the corporation feels like. Hence why it's a
| slippery slope.
| lokar wrote:
| Parlor did not have a real, honest, effort at moderation.
|
| It was done poorly, and seems to have been just a fig leaf
| to say they were doing it. Objectively it was not working.
| Way way way worse than anything on FB or Twitter.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| It seems likely that this is true. But couldn't you get
| to the same end-result by having good intentions but a
| bad moderation system? (e.g. I want to keep Nazi content
| off my service so I subject all posts to a review by 5
| other users. That might work until you get a bunch of
| Nazis that suddenly sign up up-vote each other's
| content).
|
| Not every new service can afford to moderate things like
| "FB or Twitter". And this is an important risk to account
| for.
| [deleted]
| TeaDrunk wrote:
| You should be able to identify that a nazi takeover is
| happening and change your moderation systems accordingly.
| Any product person who is claiming to own the product
| should have eagle eyes on how their product is working or
| not working.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| To clarify, I believe that if you don't think you can
| adequately moderate your service, then you should
| absolutely not be running it. If your venders do not
| think you are doing a good enough job moderating your
| service, then they should not be forced to do business
| with you.
|
| All I am trying to say is that it is important to realize
| that how you moderate your service may very well be
| judged by your venders and you could have a bad time if
| they find it lacking....
| esja wrote:
| By that standard Twitter should be in a lot of trouble as
| well. And probably Facebook too.
| lokar wrote:
| But, AIUI, this content has been "slipping through" their
| moderation for a long time (and getting worse) and they
| did nothing.
|
| So, infective moderation combined with apparent
| indifference.
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| Right I am not disagreeing with this at all. I am just
| trying to say that "infective moderation combined with
| apparent indifference" seems less extreme than
| DailyStormer-style intentional promotion of violent
| content.
|
| There is still a long ways to go from "infective
| moderation combined with apparent indifference" to
| "effective moderation" or even to "infective moderation
| that we are attempting to fix". But somewhere between
| "apparent indifference" and "attempting to fix" is a
| nasty grey area that you don't want to be caught in.
| mcguire wrote:
| I would bet that any legal standard would involve phrases
| like "good faith attempt" and "standard of practice". (If
| you find a circle of Nazis up-voting each other, you'll
| have to think up a new moderation scheme.)
|
| FaceBook and Twitter are decent examples---their
| moderation systems are pretty hit-or-miss, assuming good
| faith.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic election and
| install an illegitimate government.
|
| Erm, was Parler as a platform even doing that? Or you know,
| PEOPLE on the platform, which is not the exact same thing?
| sildur wrote:
| At some point it is the same thing. By act or omission.
| myko wrote:
| The platform refused to moderate that content.
|
| In fact it was its raison d'etre.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Turns out you should keep those attempting to over throw
| democratic elections off your service.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Ouch, that's going to hurt. USA government is a pretty
| big customer. Or do we not care about democratic
| elections in Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Egypt, etc.?
| sildur wrote:
| No, we don't. I thought trying not to shit in the same
| place you eat was common sense, yet here we are...
| WindyLakeReturn wrote:
| But that isn't the standard that was used. It seems to be
| something more akin to 'don't not moderate content that
| encourages...'. Except it isn't quite clear what moderation
| is considered good enough, as one can look at other sites
| which hosted and continue to host similar content. Sure, they
| haven't taken the stance they won't moderate, but they
| haven't done enough to moderate the content to remove it.
|
| Or is it that stance? Perhaps that was the defining standard,
| that they took a stance instead of passively allowing it to
| remain like other sites do (until called out, at which point
| they'll react based on the size of the call out).
| fasdf1122 wrote:
| Nope. Decentralized services will be very important moving
| forward. Most people just haven't realized it yet.
| sildur wrote:
| What works for Al Qaeda could work for Y'all Qaeda, who
| knows.
| trendoid wrote:
| AWS's letter to Parler explains quite well why they are
| taking them down and I don't see any rational argument
| against it
|
| https://twitter.com/karaswisher/status/1348136296976408576/p.
| ..
| baybal2 wrote:
| > What are the best mitigations here, both technical and
| social?
|
| Buy a server?
| disgrunt wrote:
| Buy a server where?
| scaredthrow1112 wrote:
| Thank you for saying this. Personally I'm fine with there
| being rules against things like websites for how to make a
| pipe bomb or as you mentioned, overthrow the government
| golemotron wrote:
| > I get the concern you're expressing, but not everything is
| a slippery slope
|
| This won't age well.
| bawolff wrote:
| The best mitigation is negotiating strong contracts with
| significant penalties if the provider does not provide the
| services promised.
|
| Its not like getting screwed over because a vendor changes its
| mine about fulfilling its obligations half way through is a new
| issue, this is just a bit of an exceptional case of that.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| No provider is going to sign a contract that forces them to
| host illegal content that opens them up to liability.
| bawolff wrote:
| Poster never said he intended to host illegal content.
| teddyh wrote:
| " _Your faith in the legal system is appalling._ "
|
| https://www.schlockmercenary.com/2009-06-26
| kmeisthax wrote:
| "Every cloud vendor in the world telling you off" is a
| particular threat model only usually encountered by literal
| terrorist groups, torrent sites, Sci-Hub... and now right-wing
| filter-bubbles.
|
| In this case, Parler will need to either build all their own
| infrastructure or sign up with some really skeevy second-world
| hosting sites. This, interestingly, means being hosted on the
| same servers that host actual terrorists like Hamas; if they
| intend to remain a legal corporate outfit their lawyers will
| probably have some very strong words about using such services.
| Building your own infrastructure is expensive, even without the
| particular threat of just being Parler. Notably, net neutrality
| has been dead in the water ever since Trump took office, so
| anything high-value becomes extraordinarily expensive fast.
|
| I doubt other sites are going to face this same problem in the
| future. Parler's problem is not that they're on the "wrong
| side" of a political debate; it's that they deliberately aided
| and abetted the planning of literal insurrection. Providing any
| sort of service to them is a huge legal risk to your enterprise
| now. If the bar for technical deplatforming was lowered beyond
| "technically legal", you'd see the market for alternative
| infrastructure providers open up, because those are customers
| that AWS/Google Cloud/Azure are no longer serving. AWS can only
| "get away with" deplatforming Parler specifically due to the
| legally risky nature of working with them.
| icare_1er wrote:
| It is easy to see where that trend is going. Little steps by
| little steps, GAFAs while turn the West in an environment
| similar to Iran or China when it comes to freedom of speech.
| analog31 wrote:
| Every week there's a front page story on HN to the tune of "X
| froze my account and won't tell me why, and their appeal
| process is totally opaque."
|
| I think that to some extent, the availability of multiple
| providers, and the risk of getting kicked out, are the long
| term remedy. People will figure out how to mitigate sole-source
| risks. There might be a risk-reward tradeoff, i.e., the most
| desirable platforms from a short term profit standpoint might
| carry the biggest risk of getting shutdown. There will always
| be _somebody_ who will let you in, at some level of service and
| security.
| imperio59 wrote:
| Bullying is real.
|
| My wife and I run a side Business Saas product. She is listed
| as COO on her social media profile for the company.
|
| She is also in a bunch of groups about gardening in our local
| area.
|
| During the height of BLM protests and CHOP/CHAZ, someone made a
| post that was very off-topic for the group, basically saying we
| should all support what was happening in the CHOP and all the
| violence against cops was justified due to racial injustice.
|
| My wife took no position on the issue but politely replied
| saying the post felt off-topic and she didn't want to hear
| about politics in her favorite gardening group.
|
| Several people attacked her on the post, calling her white
| privileged, racist, etc... all for suggesting the post was off-
| topic (even though the group's own rules prohibited political
| content).
|
| One person took it a step further and went on her profile to
| see where she worked. They then messaged our company's social
| media profile to tell our company that my wife was a racist,
| and she should be fired or reprimanded because she had made
| racist comments in a FB group (she had not, and the person
| provided no screenshots/proof either).
|
| Unfortunately for that person, they did not realize they were
| talking to my wife's husband (me) who promptly banned them from
| our page and blocked their profile from my/my wife's profiles
| so they could no longer bother us.
|
| However, this type of new "online activism" is rampant
| nowadays. Small companies often have little choice but to
| comply or be publicly shamed/bullied, including doxxing or
| going after individual employees, as in our story.
|
| I disapprove of this type of behavior. This is mob justice in a
| different form. It is the court of public opinion rather than
| an actual court of law where someone would get a chance to
| defend themselves. It is wrong and our society needs to grow up
| past this childish phase it's going through where every angry
| person riled up by this or that party's rhetoric feels like
| they have the right to attempt to destroy another person's
| livelihood for the sake of pushing "their truth" or "justice".
| That's not what Justice is.
| jhowell wrote:
| > My wife took no position on the issue but politely replied
| saying the post felt off-topic and she didn't want to hear
| about politics in her favorite gardening group.
|
| > Several people attacked her on the post, calling her white
| privileged, racist, etc... all for suggesting the post was
| off-topic (even though the group's own rules prohibited
| political content).
|
| Isn't the ability to decide what issue your bring to a space
| and then deciding which issues you'll "take no position" a
| privilege?
| munchbunny wrote:
| _Isn 't the ability to decide what issue your bring to a
| space and then deciding which issues you'll "take no
| position" a privilege?_
|
| Why is it privilege to avoid discussing politics in a
| gardening group? I'll grant that "take no position" can be
| a privileged position in some contexts, but a gardening
| group discussion seems pretty clearly not one of those
| contexts.
| kenjackson wrote:
| Bullying from internet trolls is real and spans political
| boundaries. It goes into even things like sports fandom and
| video game culture. This is a fundamentally different issue
| than what we're seeing with Parler.
| burade wrote:
| That's not even close to bullying.
|
| Bullying is more like a 14 year old black kid getting beaten
| to death by a group of adult white men, who were later
| acquitted.
| rimliu wrote:
| That's murder.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It would be interesting if power companies run by various
| oligarchs started disconnecting power to AWS servers: "go
| generate your own power"
|
| Or maybe food delivery truck drivers is a better analogy since
| that isn't a utility...
| InitialLastName wrote:
| It's more like if I rent you an apartment in my building and
| then find out you're using it to manufacture bombs. If you end
| up blowing up a bridge and it can be determined that I knew
| about your actions, I can potentially be held liable (in the PR
| sense, if not the legal sense) for abetting terrorism.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| This feels analogous to paper companies banding together and
| refusing to provide paper to a newspaper whose opinion column
| they disagree with.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| More like "whose letters to the editor page routinely
| featured calls for violent revolution."
| moate wrote:
| It's more analogous to a single server host refusing to host
| a site, while the material components (actual physical
| servers) are still readily available if likely outside the
| financial range for a site at their size (tbh though, I have
| no idea what sort of server needs this site would actual
| have).
|
| Parler could still go out and build their own servers. The
| fact that this is a project driven by "free speech
| enthusiasts" and not actual engineers means they're probably
| going to have a real hard time getting the engineering stuff
| back in line.
|
| Apple/Google refusing to sell your app is just that: a store
| refusing to sell a product.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Parler could still go out and build their own servers._
|
| Yes, and as someone on Twitter pointed out, as a customer
| also denied service, Rosa Parks could have gone out and
| started her own bus line (likely outside her financial
| range though).
|
| The argument to "do it yourself" is silly. Europe sees it.
| The ACLU sees it. Why can't you?
|
| For the record: I think these platforms should be
| responsible for what they host.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| The 1st amendment gives all of the companies the freedom
| of association. They can deny doing business for any
| reason except for protected class. Are you trying to
| force companies to do business with entities that they do
| not wish to do business with?
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I don't want to force companies to do business with
| entities they do not wish to do business with, but I do
| want companies that engage in ideological censorship to
| lose their immunity to be held liable for damages caused
| by the entities they do continue to do business with -
| unless they stop engaging in moral editorializing.
| nicpottier wrote:
| Maybe you missed this last week. Section 230 says nothing
| about providers not being able to moderate: https://www.t
| echdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
| moate wrote:
| The entire down-voting mob I've been railing against the
| last 2 days missed this.
|
| "I want things that I like to be available to me and I
| want people who deny it to me to be held criminally
| liable because I don't understand the case law".
|
| I think people are misplacing their anger that big-tech
| has too much control over our world. This is fine to be
| upset about, but you can't say "they have too much
| control, therefor it's illegal for them to do the things
| they're doing". No, the laws you want haven't been
| written (or repealed).
|
| There's also a ton of pie-in-the-sky dreaming that if we
| could just undo the "bad-part" of 230 then magically
| Twitter would have to host _things_ because _reasons_
| which is a gross misunderstanding.
|
| TL;dr- HN commenters tend to skew towards "Engineer"
| understanding and not "Lawyer" understand, and it's
| causing them friction with reality lately.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _The 1st amendment gives all of the companies the
| freedom of association._
|
| I was under the impression the First Amendment was about
| the government imposing laws that restricted religion or
| expression of the citizenry. Can you point to the part
| that says anything about how businesses (built off of
| public infrastructure) are to be run?
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Citizens United gave corporations constitutional rights
| (specifically the first amendment). Which means they have
| freedom of association. The only way to stop AWS from
| dropping Parler would be if the government forced AWS to
| host Parler which would be a violation of AWS's freedom
| of association.
|
| The only caveat to this is protected class. There are
| some movements to make political affiliation a protected
| class, but I personally think that's the wrong path to go
| down since it's not an "inherent" attribute of a person
| like race, age, sexual orientation, etc.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _The only way to stop AWS from dropping Parler would be
| if the government forced AWS to host Parler which would
| be a violation of AWS's freedom of association._
|
| I don't have an answer to this, because I agree with you.
|
| Maybe if you "arbitrarily" decide to _stop_ doing
| business with someone, after you 've already _started_ ,
| without a breech of any terms of service, you should be
| financially liable in some way? Contract law should cover
| that (I'm def no expert). Does it? Like, if Amazon
| decides to cut me off from hosting, and I haven't broken
| any laws, rules or ToS, they should have to pay for me to
| be up-and-running elsewhere. In other words, AWS can't
| boot someone without establishing wrong-doing.
|
| It feels like this wouldn't require much more than
| tighter contracts, handing more power to the customer.
| I'm in favour of that.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| If you sign a long-term contract, sure. For example,
| Pinterest just signed a multi-year $750M contract with
| AWS. If AWS kicked them off, there would be repercussion
| for breach of contract. But just signing up for AWS's
| generic TOS's with a credit card means AWS can likely
| kick you off for any reason.
|
| Pretty much any large company with appropriate risk
| controls (not to mention the financial incentives) will
| negotiate and sign custom long-term deals with AWS's
| extremely large sales staff.
|
| https://www.ciodive.com/news/underlying-pinterests-
| technolog...
| vharuck wrote:
| If there was a law preventing businesses from refusing
| service to a group of people, then the government is
| effectively requiring those businesses to associate with
| those people. Association is protected as free speech, so
| that's government-compelled speech. And the First
| Amendment prohibits the government from "abridging the
| freedom of speech," which means no compelled speech or
| association.
|
| Still, we do have some laws compelling speech (tobacco
| warning labels) and association (restaurants can't refuse
| to serve Muslims). But there has to be a good
| justification. Warning labels express facts and prevent
| harm. Protected classes are all things considered
| "inherent" to a person (gender, religion, ethnicity). But
| there's a high bar for these kind of laws. And preventing
| people from choosing relationships based on politics is
| clearly against the First Amendment.
|
| >built off of public infrastructure
|
| This describes almost every business.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _If there was a law preventing businesses from refusing
| service to a group of people_
|
| This isn't about refusing to do business with someone.
| The issue in my eyes is _agreeing_ to do business with
| someone and then arbitrarily[1] deciding to _not_ do
| business with someone, with no recourse to the customer
| because the provider is a massive conglomerate with
| unlimited resources.
|
| AWS didn't refuse to do business with Parler, they did
| business with them for years. Then one day, based on
| ambiguous and discriminantly applied rules that may or
| may not apply to Parler's competitors on the same hosting
| platform, decided to _not_ do business with them. I don
| 't think that's right.
|
| Look at Apple's letter to the Parler CEO regarding being
| pulled from the App Store: Apple says Parler is
| responsible for all the content on their site. And yet,
| Apple doesn't live by the same rules, in fact they
| actively lobby against them.
|
| [1] Arbitrary because AWS, as far as I've seen, doesn't
| say "here are the rules you agreed to, here's where you
| broke them. Goodbye". There's a lot of ambiguity. Was
| Parler filled with hate and bullshit? From what I've
| seen, absolutely. But so is Twitter, and they're
| incoming, not outgoing.
| vharuck wrote:
| I'm with you for preventing companies from using their
| size to force very unfair contracts. But I have to say,
| in this situation, a fairer contract would probably still
| let Amazon drop Parler.
|
| > Was Parler filled with hate and bullshit? From what
| I've seen, absolutely. But so is Twitter, and they're
| incoming, not outgoing.
|
| From the sound of it, Parler was not responding well to
| requests for moderation and didn't show signs of
| improvement. Twitter might be better at it. And, for
| contracts, it shouldn't matter if one party lets some
| parties slide but is a stickler for others. The contract
| was the terms on paper, not "These terms or the most lax
| behaviors for any parties agreeing to the same terms."
| klagermkii wrote:
| Maybe, as with the opposition to the Citizens United
| ruling, rights that are given to people should not
| automatically apply to companies.
| moate wrote:
| One major difference: Rosa Parks was an individual
| attempting to use a private service. Parler is a business
| attempting to use a private service to do business. Rosa
| Parks getting kicked off for being black is one thing,
| but what if she was on the same bus trying to sell candy
| bars? Weirdly, that's still a reason you can get kicked
| off a bus.
|
| I mean the question of the era is what "rights" do we
| have online.
|
| Do I have the "right" to have my site hosted by a private
| company, or is that a service? Do platforms have a
| "requirement" to act as neutrally as possible, or is it
| just better for business?
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Do I have the "right" to have my site hosted by a
| private company, or is that a service?_
|
| It's a good question, and I think we need to figure out
| where that line is.
|
| Because I agree, AWS should be able to say they don't
| want this customer. At the same time, when we live in a
| world where _everything_ is privatized (and monopolized)
| you very quickly run out of options. Host it yourself?
| What if all server companies refuse to sell to you, or
| the internet service providers refuse to provide you with
| connectivity? Do you need to lay your own fibre and fab
| your chips? Where do you get those supplies? It 's tough.
| eejit_compiler wrote:
| That is quite the hypothetical. Given that the internet
| is a worldwide phenomenon, it seems incredibly unlikely
| that _all_ server companies and internet service
| providers would refuse their business.
|
| In particular, the 'bulletproof hosting' market is still
| going strong. For example, just look at The Pirate Bay,
| who have managed to stay online and operational despite
| years of attempts by powerful corporations and nation
| states to take it down.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > That is quite the hypothetical
|
| Until two days ago, being booted from your hosting
| provider for ideological disagreement was also quite the
| hypothetical.
| eejit_compiler wrote:
| It's not, this has happened many times previously.
|
| Including against similarly far-right sites, e.g.
| Stormfront, Gab, 8kun/8chan, etc. All of which are still
| operational, after changing hosting providers.
| Rels wrote:
| Is it that hypothetical? Is 8chan back online? Last time
| I checked it wasn't, though it might have changed in the
| meantime.
|
| (obligatory disclaimer that I don't use 8chan, and that
| from the outside it seems like an horrible place)
| eejit_compiler wrote:
| 8chan (8kun) is back online, yes. They just used a
| different hosting provider.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Given that the internet is a worldwide phenomenon, it
| seems incredibly unlikely that all server companies and
| internet service providers would refuse their business._
|
| I can agree that getting up and running is, probably,
| always _possible_. But that is no consolation if you 're
| a business that can arbitrarily be shut down on a whim,
| perhaps without even being given a warning. The financial
| circumstances might make restarting or moving around
| untenable.
|
| > _In particular, the 'bulletproof hosting' market is
| still going strong._
|
| Yes, and if there's anything good to say about this mess,
| it's that this particular kind of service is likely to
| grow.
| eejit_compiler wrote:
| Yes but considering the business Parler are in, i.e.
| publishing the sort of controversial content that gets
| its users banned on more mainstream social media sites,
| they would have been wise to have a disaster recovery
| plan for hosting that covered this possibility.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _they would have been wise to have a disaster recovery
| plan for hosting that covered this possibility._
|
| I agree, and don't feel upset about their particular
| circumstances.
|
| However, as others have noted, Twitter (moving to AWS)
| has vastly more controversial content. What are the
| guidelines as far as what content is tolerable and/or
| needs to been moderated, and at what rate of "urgency",
| for them versus Parler? These things aren't spelled out.
| How can a small business comply?
| eejit_compiler wrote:
| I think the general guideline is, don't provide your
| hosting provider with incentives to enforce their terms
| of service against you, to the point where you're denied
| any further business from them.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Rosa Parks getting kicked off for being black is one
| thing
|
| A thing that was legal when it happened.
| kingdomcome50 wrote:
| I've seen this sentiment before, and I can't figure out
| the logic.
|
| I used to work for a company that didn't _make_ 300K a
| _quarter_ and we managed our own boxes. Yes our scale and
| problem domain was about an order of magnitude smaller,
| but it wasn 't trivially small (optimization was still a
| relevant problem for us). What did people do 15 years ago
| before all of these could platforms did all the work for
| you? Do that. It's really not that hard!
|
| The analogy above is ridiculous. The problem isn't that
| Rosa Parks couldn't start her own bus line (though at the
| time this was probably not feasible for more reasons than
| just money). The problem is that she was denied service
| because of her race. You cannot change your race by
| "doing it yourself".
|
| If SpaceX denies me the opportunity to fly their shuttle
| do I have to build my own spacecraft to get to space?
| Yes... I do. I'm sure we could come up with all sorts of
| other fun examples!
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _we managed our own boxes._
|
| The logic is that "your own boxes" is just another layer
| in the stack of places private companies can deny doing
| business with you. Did you manufacture those boxes
| yourself, from the silicon up? If you didn't, you better
| hope you don't get blacklisted by parts suppliers.
|
| > _You cannot change your race by "doing it yourself"._
|
| The analogy is: if she didn't like being denied because
| of her race, she should have started her own busline.
|
| Of course, we have laws in place that say you _can 't_
| deny someone service based on race. That's great, and
| solves that problem.
|
| So tell me what law Parler broke? Has it been proven in
| court? Or did a private company decide that on their own?
| Why should they have that power?
|
| I mean, I'm not naive; I understand what Parler is/was
| trying to do, and it's gross. But the process shouldn't
| be arbitrary, at the whims of liability protected pseudo-
| monopolies.
| klyrs wrote:
| > So tell me what law Parler broke?
|
| I haven't seen amazon claim that Parler broke the law.
| They have a TOS policy that forbids the hosting of
| illegal content.
|
| > Has it been proven in court?
|
| If a AWS customer is hosting child porn, does AWS take it
| down as soon as they're aware of the content, or do they
| wait for a court ruling?
|
| > Or did a private company decide that on their own? Why
| should they have that power?
|
| It's not power. You have a responsibility to exercise
| your judgement, and avoid participating in criminal acts.
| If you knowingly participate and profit until there's a
| trial in court, then you're an accessory. Section 230 has
| some exemptions -- you aren't protected if you maintain
| illegal content.
|
| What happened on 1/6 was an armed crowd breached the
| capitol building. A plain reading indicates that this is
| an act of war, and AWS has enough legal problems without
| opening themselves to charges of aiding an enemy of the
| state in an act of treason.
|
| This isn't "power" it's a matter of legal responsibility.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _I haven 't seen amazon claim that Parler broke the
| law. They have a TOS policy that forbids the hosting of
| illegal content._
|
| If Amazon is saying Parler hosted "illegal content" then
| they are saying they broke the law. How can it be any
| other way?
|
| > _If a AWS customer is hosting child porn, does AWS take
| it down as soon as they 're aware of the content, or do
| they wait for a court ruling?_
|
| Child porn is _illegal_ , hate speech (and in lots of
| places, "incitement") is not. In fact, in many
| jurisdictions the latter are _protected speech_. There is
| no moral equivalence here. Society 's rules are clear on
| child porn. They are less clear on what constitutes
| incitement. That should be evident if you're following
| these events.
|
| > _It 's not power._
|
| "ALCU Counsel Warns of Unchecked Power of Twitter,
| Facebook After Trump Suspension"
|
| https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/aclu-counsel-
| warns-o...
| Znafon wrote:
| > Child porn is illegal, hate speech (and in lots of
| places, "incitement") is not.
|
| Isn't "imminent lawless action" the limit of free speech?
| it seems clear after January 6th that a part of what was
| promoted on Parler was both imminent and lawless.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _it seems clear after January 6th that a part of what
| was promoted on Parler was both imminent and lawless._
|
| Assuming the people planning on Parler were some of the
| same people who stormed the Capitol then yes, absolutely.
| With the benefit of hindsight, this was incitement,
| potentially criminal.
|
| Now the tricky part: from Parler's perspective, content
| that at one minute is "free speech" is suddenly illegal,
| or at the very least ToS breaking, in a matter of hours.
| Were they given a reasonable amount of time to remove the
| content (and what good would that even do, after the
| fact)? Did Amazon make Parler a political target, and
| arbitrarily apply a rule to them that they did not apply
| to other customers (Twitter)? Likely, imho. Does any of
| it even matter if "businesses can do what they want"?
| klyrs wrote:
| > If Amazon is saying Parler hosted "illegal content"
| then they are saying they broke the law. How can it be
| any other way?
|
| Because I'm not clear on the specific exemptions for
| section 230. I can't say one way or another whether
| Parler itself broke the law.
|
| > That's kind of the point here. Society's rules are
| clear on child porn. They are less clear on what
| constitutes incitement. That should be evident if you're
| following these events.
|
| Did people openly plan an armed attack on the capitol
| building? Yes.
|
| Did people follow through on aforementioned plans? Yes.
| Violence was incited. Having read quite a few relevant
| posts on Parler, I'm reasonably sure that their users
| broke the law.
|
| There is a lot of gray area between voicing frustration
| and incitement, but this is not one of those cases.
| kingdomcome50 wrote:
| Sure we can move the goalposts. No, we did not mine for
| our own minerals. What is your point? If our company was
| unable to secure hardware it would have ceased to exist.
| A shame for the company, its employees, and clients, but
| that's business.
|
| > The analogy is: if she didn't like being denied because
| of her race, she should have started her own busline.
|
| Right. The above is _not_ summarizing the reason why our
| society has a problem with the events that occurred. The
| problem is _why_ Rose Parks was denied service. It has
| _nothing_ to do with her ability to start her own bus
| line. Does that make sense? Again, the analogy is
| completely missing the point.
|
| > So tell me what law Parler broke?
|
| I have no idea nor the inclination to investigate. They
| don't need to break a law for another business to cut
| ties. This happens all. the. time. Your problem seems to
| be a case of "this instance is different than the rest".
| If you have a problem with antitrust behavior, argue
| that. You aren't going anywhere with this line of logic.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Sure we can move the goalposts._
|
| Nobody is moving goalposts. The point is that there's
| always another layer of service providers that can cancel
| you, some of which are monopolists. If you think that's
| fine, or "just business", good for you. I do not.
|
| > _What is your point?_
|
| People shouldn't be able to put you out of business
| because they have more power and don't like you.
|
| > _Does that make sense? Again, the analogy is completely
| missing the point._
|
| You're overthinking things. For the third time: "If you
| don't like it, build your own competitor" -- oft-
| repeated-- is a ridiculous statement in most cases. No
| one is going to build their own App Store, Play Store,
| Facebook..or yes, bus line.
|
| I'm glad you can poke holes in an off-hand analogy
| though. It was never intended to be a literal 1-1
| translation, with Parler filling the role of Rosa Parks.
|
| > _They don 't need to break a law for another business
| to cut ties._
|
| This is news. Thanks.
|
| (edited to remove much sarcasm)
| kingdomcome50 wrote:
| > If you don't like it, build your own competitor
|
| That is fundamental axiom of free-market capitalism. How
| do you think it is supposed to work? I'm trying to
| imagine a system where competition doesn't exist... oh
| wait. It's called "Communism".
|
| > People shouldn't be able to put you out of business
| because they have more power and don't like you.
|
| You must be young. "I have a bridge to sell you". In 15
| years you'll better-understand how the world works and
| your idealism now will feel rather foolish in retrospect.
| I'll leave it at that.
|
| > some of which are monopolists
|
| I think _this_ is actually what you are meaning to argue
| against. Just poorly. There is nothing wrong with a
| company deciding that the profit they derive from selling
| me widgets eclipses the losses they realize elsewhere,
| and to therefore end the relationship. This _literally_
| happens constantly. I could give you an example _last
| month_ where we had to end a relationship with a client
| because they are a competitor to a bigger (more
| profitable) client who didn 't like us serving both. It
| happens. I promise.
|
| What it seems like you are actually railing against is
| anti-competitive behavior which _is_ protected against in
| antitrust law. Monopolies _are not_ against the law so
| long as they don 't engage in certain market-making
| behaviors[0]. That is, behaviors that make "building your
| own competitor" impossible (i.e. undermining the
| fundamental axiom of FMC). This isn't a case of anti-
| competitive behavior. This is the market deciding that
| the financial/political cost of associating their
| business with an entity is greater than the profits they
| gain. It's business. Parler, in this moment, simply
| doesn't have a sustainable business model. The best thing
| they could do is to turn the narrative, lean in, and
| _applaud_ AWS for exercising its freedom. But they are
| young too...
|
| And for what it's worth I wasn't "poking holes" in your
| analogy. I was tearing it down entirely. It doesn't hold
| at all - even a little bit. To believe otherwise is to
| misunderstand the very foundations on which the civil
| rights movement was based, and some respects, liberal
| democracy altogether.
|
| [0] Amazon is currently in court fighting the government
| in this respect. So is Facebook.
| [deleted]
| vlod wrote:
| >But the process shouldn't be arbitrary
|
| Curious to know what the process other than market forces
| should be. Government? Paaah.. they can't even protect
| kids in schools being shot, control the pandemic or even
| distribute vaccine in any competent manner. (lots of
| other examples also come to mind!)
|
| If the president calls for the boycott of Goodyear [0],
| isn't it also fair for Goodyear to not sell to any of
| Trumps companies? (Too lazy to look at other boycott
| tweets)
|
| [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/20/fi
| nance-2...
| vlod wrote:
| Reminds me of Stackoverflow [0]:
|
| 1.3B page views per month, with I think 23 servers.
| Building a mostly (I guess?) view only site is different
| than something like twitter, but it's doable.
|
| [0] https://stackexchange.com/performance
| wobblyasp wrote:
| I mean; if there was a company that would capable of doing
| it... but yah this feels like a false equivalency.
|
| Private companies are free to refuse service to anyone; unless
| there is specific legislation to the contrary.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| I assure you there will be countless power supply/food delivery
| companies extremely eager for the chance to service Amazon/AWS.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Yes, power companies have different regulations than AWS.
|
| Which means the analogy is boring.
|
| There's probably a good discussion to be had about how to
| regulate services like AWS though. The dynamics are probably
| different, with power companies not quite having the same
| potential for wanting to disassociate from noxious customers.
| blamestross wrote:
| I think the interesting takeaway is that so many people
| consider social media and internet hosting to essentially be
| public services. The hidden premise/misunderstanding in the
| "social media censorship" concept is that they are so
| critical to participation in society that they should be a
| right like power or water. There are arguments for moving
| things like internet access into being a public utility. It
| is interesting that they have skipped directly to wanting to
| socialize social media.
| chillacy wrote:
| Internet hosting doesn't have as strong a geologic
| component though. Power and water are utilities because
| they are "natural monopolies". UPS and FedEx are not
| utilities since they have less fixed infrastructure.
| blamestross wrote:
| geologic component isn't relevant. In our current legal
| system, the only way to ensure equal access to a service
| is via regulation as a public utility.
| ABeeSea wrote:
| Plus AWS _does_ actually make their own power. The own and
| /or fund wind and solar farms across the globe. They also run
| their own fiber and are part of undersea cable consortiums.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Here's what I've seen when the powers-that-be disrupt online
| communities... most people who were "casuals" stop paying
| attention when the convenient options (Twitter, Parler)
| disappear, and just go on with their life, watching Netflix or
| football instead. But the truly hardcore get pushed underground
| into a smaller and more virulent community (which Parler was to
| Twitter, and which something will be to Parler).
|
| I expect Trumpism to take a hit as a political movement but
| thrive as an extremist movement as a consequence of this
| "shunning." Expect fewer 2016 elections and more January 6th
| terrorism.
| pyronik19 wrote:
| Well the 90s vision of a free and open internet are dead. We now
| have big tech censored speech where anything the right of bernie
| sanders is targeted for removal and any platforms that are
| created to combat this are systemically attacked at the
| infrastructure level. Do people not understand WHY people were at
| the capitol? It's because of this bullshit.
| u678u wrote:
| Parler is obviously a cesspit. However its a minor sideshow. Most
| of the sickness of the last four years has been spread on
| Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Fox News. These however are much
| better connected so are still running today.
| rnikander wrote:
| Does anyone else think it's suspicious that they built everything
| on AWS? I mean, if you know you're going to take heat for your
| content being less moderated, wouldn't you diversify your
| infrastructure? I wonder if someone wanted this to happen, in
| order to increase support for certain legislative action?
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| Why would they know they would take heat for their moderation
| policy? Are there any other examples? I can't think of any.
|
| Edit: I mean examples where companies lose access to core
| services due to their moderation policy. I know twitter and
| facebook get shit for theirs all the time, but nothing
| substantive ever happens.
| causalmodels wrote:
| I think Gab [1] is a relevant example. They were dropped by
| their GoDaddy, Stripe, PayPal, etc. after the tree of life
| shooter posted their manifesto on the site. Another example
| would be Cloudflare dropping 8chan [2] after the El Paso
| shooter, Christchurch shooter, and Poway synagogue shooter
| used the site to post their manifestos. Cloudflare also
| dropped support for the neo-nazi website The Daily Stormer
| [3] although my impression is that the reason for termination
| was deeply related to people on the website claiming their
| continued business relationship signaled ideological sympathy
| on the part of Cloudflare [4 -- about halfway down]
|
| [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/28/far-right-social-
| network-g...
|
| [2] https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-
| for-8chan/
|
| [3]https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-
| stormer/
|
| [4] https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/
| shrimpx wrote:
| I think it was just blind ignorance, evidenced by their rage
| and disbelief when it happened.
| asdffdsa wrote:
| Ockam's razor man, I doubt they even considered it. And by the
| time they did, the app was too big to move and/or even secure
| another cloud provider.
| zacharycohn wrote:
| I believe the person who started it was a former AWS engineer.
| Use what you know.
| yesiamyourdad wrote:
| I'm pretty mindblown that after seeing what happened to
| 4chan/8chan, they didn't forsee this day coming. My theory is
| that Parler _wanted_ this to happen, so they could raise a
| stink / file a court case. The founder is a major ideologue and
| this whole thing might be better for business than if AWS had
| left them alone.
| kukx wrote:
| There is a risk of radicalization of masses. And banning people
| will not help with reversing it. They will find another way to
| communicate and the tech giants will no longer be able to
| challenge the flawed message. And the ideas should be challenged,
| especially the bad ones. Why the tech giants act this way and
| decrease their reach/base? It would be naive to think it is out
| of a good will. I suspect they want to show the new government
| that there is no need to regulate them, because they can do it
| themselves.
| verytrivial wrote:
| I find it slightly ironic that the fruits of the whole ARPANET
| project around network routing resilience in the face of node
| failure due to enemy attack (domestic or foreign) ends up
| threatening the health of the Republic because we can no longer
| tell who is an ememy (domestic or foreign) on the resilient
| network.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Note that Parler is screwed because some "nodes" have reached a
| disproportionate importance.
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| Some details about Parler origins and funding
|
| https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1327253991936454663
|
| and
|
| https://twitter.com/VickerySec/status/1302815780782764033
|
| For context
| Fjolsvith wrote:
| It was announced this morning that the letter Q would be removed
| from Sesame Street.
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