[HN Gopher] Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut ...
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Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
Author : eu
Score : 128 points
Date : 2021-01-21 20:45 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| All politics aside, I was more sympathetic to the "build your own
| alternative" argument regarding the general deplatforming trend
| of the last few years.
|
| Now I'm not nearly as sympathetic to that argument. Having
| POTUS45 removed from twitter was basically the chance in a
| lifetime for Parler, and in that critical 48 hours their hosting
| provider pulled the rug out from them and their app was removed
| from BOTH app stores (I have a hard time believing there wasn't
| some form of coordination here). It seems especially sinister to
| me, but maybe that's because I'm viewing it outside of a
| political lens.
| sparrish wrote:
| Amazon has a right to associate (or not associate) with whomever
| they want. This is a fundamental principle of freedom - something
| Parler should know, understand, and espouse. Why are they
| fighting? They should be applauding.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| This is true with one important exception: you can not refuse
| business on the basis of race, color, religion or national
| origin.
|
| Refusing business based on political ideology is not only
| allowed but seems to be encouraged!
| fasdf1122 wrote:
| Agreed. But section 230 protection needs to be removed - these
| social media companies are publishers and should be held
| responsible for their content.
| minikites wrote:
| Free market for thee, but not for me.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:
| there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not
| bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not
| protect.
|
| https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-
| progre...
| ngngngng wrote:
| Reminder that Parler's claim to be in support of free speech was
| bogus, as their CEO would personally work alongside a team of
| volunteers to ban anyone that joined the platform and posted left
| wing views.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2020/06/27/parlers-f...
| guerrilla wrote:
| Just one question I haven't seen answered: In what way are they
| supposedly a competitor of Amazon?
| tptacek wrote:
| Here's the denial of the TRO:
|
| https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qhXD-4Kaw5dCEBv0dUM8buygEKg...
|
| Parler hasn't lost the case, just a TRO that demands
| reinstatement on AWS, but the ruling on the TRO requires the
| judge to tip their hand about the case, and Parler is going to
| lose.
|
| I don't think you even need to read the AWS AUP to know that
| Parler has no real case here. To buy Parler's contract claim,
| you'd have to believe that Amazon's lawyers are so stupid that
| they set out a TOS for the world's largest hosting provider that
| didn't give AWS the right to boot customers, which is something
| AWS --- really, every hosting provider --- has to do all the
| time. You almost have to not know anything about the hosting
| business to think there could be a case here.
|
| But if you need to read a judge laughing Parler's claims off,
| well, now you can. Real "based" energy in excerpting the AWS AUP
| in their complaint and clipping it right before the clause that
| gives AWS the right to terminate service without notice to
| customers who violate their AUP. The judge, uh, noticed.
|
| (As the judge points out, among the many problems with Parler's
| restraint of trade argument, there's the fact that AWS doesn't
| host Twitter's feed.)
| jcranmer wrote:
| The judge went so far as to explain why Parler's motion fails
| on _all_ of the points, not just the "likelihood of success on
| the merits". That's a pretty irate judge: they're going out of
| their way, incurring more work upon themselves, to berate you.
|
| The only surprising things here are a) it took the judge a week
| to deny this motion, and b) AWS hasn't asked for the case to be
| transferred to arbitration (given the mandatory arbitration
| clause in the TOS somewhere).
| akersten wrote:
| > (given the mandatory arbitration clause in the TOS
| somewhere).
|
| This was the most surprising angle to me - that the case
| didn't fail _prima facie_ on this clause alone. I guess at
| least it serves to really emphasize how bad of a case they
| brought.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The judge went so far as to explain why Parler's motion
| fails on all of the points,
|
| Well, actually, they said that it could pass on irreperable
| harm, but that was somewhat mitigated by the fact that much
| (but not all) of the harm could be addressed by money
| damages.
|
| It did fail the the other 3 elements, and the balancing test
| in the alternate Ninth Circuit criteria.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Expanding on this, "courts have repeatedly emphasized, an
| injunction represents an 'extraordinary remedy' that is never
| awarded as a matter of right... For a preliminary injunction to
| issue, the moving party has the burden of demonstrating all
| four of the following elements: (1) that it is likely to
| succeed on the merits; (2) that it is likely to suffer
| irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief; (3) that
| the balance of equities tips in its favor; and (4) that an
| injunction serves the public interest."
|
| Parler failed the first test.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| And likely the third and fourth as well. The judge mentions
| explicitly that they don't think reinstating Parler is in the
| public interest.
|
| Clearly Parler will suffer irreparable harm here, but they
| failed by a good margin to meet any of the other tests here.
| fasdf1122 wrote:
| This is crazy, it proves the censorship and corruption runs
| deeper than just some tech CEOs.
| snoshy wrote:
| It seemed apparent right when the case was filed that Parler
| didn't have a leg to stand on. It was partly a play for
| publicity that plays well into their customer demographics, and
| a dying gasp of trying to seek some kind of injunctive help
| from the administration, no matter how impossible it seemed.
|
| Judging by how weak their infrastructure was in the first
| place, getting any kind of resilient hosting in place after all
| the industry behemoths turned their backs on Parler was clear
| not a viable option. If you can't get your site to work well
| with all the best tools, you really have little hope in the
| wild west.
| gowld wrote:
| Surely there is a Russian cloud provider?
|
| Parler is a Russian company so it should be easy to sign up
| with local providers.
| michaelmior wrote:
| I know effectively zero about Parler's infrastructure, but I
| would say it's not that uncommon to build a product tied
| specifically to AWS. What really surprised me though is that
| it took them _days_ to get even a static homepage up.
| duskwuff wrote:
| My understanding is that Parler actively avoided making
| technical decisions which would tie them to AWS. Their
| problems coming back online have primarily been because
| most major hosting providers have refused to take their
| business (and possibly also as a result of their ridiculous
| hardware requirements, cf.
| https://twitter.com/th3j35t3r/status/1350612426115452935).
| WJW wrote:
| Those are... rather onerous HW requirements. Do you
| really need 20k cores to run a small-medium size social
| network? Asking because I have personal running a 40-50
| million monthly users file sharing site on less than a
| tenth of that and most of it was done with Rails (itself
| not the most minimalist of frameworks).
| mercurialshark wrote:
| Tech attorney here (with no relation to this specific
| matter). I wouldn't say they don't have a leg to stand on. I
| think it will prove to be _very_ interesting.
| mercurialshark wrote:
| Without addressing the specifics of the TRO (which is just
| an early stage request):
|
| Packinghan v North Carolina (2017) - Access to social media
| and digital infrastructure cannot be prohibited by the
| state.
|
| Marsh v Alabama (1946) - Constitutional protections of 1st
| and 14th amendments applicable within confines of "town"
| owned by a private entity.
|
| My point is that Packinghan, viewed in combination with
| Marsh, provides an interesting lens for issues concerning a
| digit company owned town. If data storage and/or social
| media can be viewed as critical digital infrastructure and
| a private organization provides those services, an argument
| can and will likely be made that the services are
| tantamount to a digital company owned town.
|
| As Justice Ginsburg said during oral argument regarding
| private digital networks, "the point is that these people
| are being cut off from a very large part of the marketplace
| of ideas. And the First Amendment includes not only the
| right to speak, but the right to receive information."
|
| And as Justice Kagan stated during Packinghan oral
| argument, "whether it's political community, whether it's
| religious community... these sites have become embedded in
| our culture as ways to communicate and ways to exercise our
| constitutional rights."
|
| Moreover, AWS's behavior may be viewed as an antitrust
| issue, acting in conjunction with a cartel. A party does
| not need to have majority market share to function in
| coordination with other dominate players in order to form a
| cartel that can manipulate the market.
|
| Also, they may or may not have provided sufficient notice
| (a contract issue).
|
| Either way, it's definitely relevant to industry and likely
| to be litigated on appeal following the trial court's
| ruling (whatever it is).
| JackC wrote:
| Regarding Marsh v Alabama: "Recently the case has been
| highlighted as a potential precedent to treat online
| communication media like Facebook as a public space to
| prevent it from censoring speech. However, in Manhattan
| Community Access Corp. v. Halleck [2019] the Supreme
| Court found that private companies only count as state
| actors for first amendment purposes if they exercise
| 'powers traditionally exclusive to the state.'"
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsh_v._Alabama#Subsequent
| _hi...
|
| Manhattan Community Access Corp. finds that _public
| access television stations_ aren't subject to the First
| Amendment, let alone private web hosts.
|
| I mean, as an attorney, I think it would be kind of
| interesting to see what happened if the Supreme Court
| ruled that private web hosts in general, or Amazon in
| particular, are somehow state actors. It would be one of
| the most practically disruptive-to-society court
| decisions I can think of, about as interesting to watch
| as declaring that all warehouses are now public parks.
| But it's against both recent precedent and common sense.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > Packinghan v North Carolina (2017) - Access to social
| media and digital infrastructure cannot be prohibited by
| the state.
|
| Amazon isn't the state.
|
| > Marsh v Alabama (1946) - Constitutional protections of
| 1st and 14th amendments applicable within confines of
| "town" owned by a private entity.
|
| Which doesn't apply here, as Amazon isn't a company
| town/acting in a quasi-governmental capacity.
|
| > AWS's behavior may be viewed as an antitrust issue,
| acting in conjunction with a cartel.
|
| The court ruled on this, and pointed out that the
| accusations were factually erroneous.
|
| > Moreover, they may or may not have provided sufficient
| notice (a contract issue).
|
| The court ruled on this, and sided with Amazon (zero
| notice in this circumstance). If anything Amazon giving
| them 24 hours was above what the contract required.
|
| I suggest reading the court's opinion before replying,
| since it undercuts many/most of the points you've tried
| to make.
| mercurialshark wrote:
| There has been no ruling by the court on the merits of
| the case. A TRO is simply a request for injunctive
| relief, asking the court to compel AWS to reinstate
| services pending litigation.
|
| --
|
| > Packinghan v North Carolina (2017) - Access to social
| media and digital infrastructure cannot be prohibited by
| the state.
|
| Amazon isn't the state.
|
| - Correct. My point is that Packinghan, viewed in
| combination with Marsh, provides an interesting lens for
| issues concerning potentially monopolistic behavior. IF
| data storage and/or social media can be viewed as
| critical digital infrastructure, an argument can and will
| likely be made that the services are tantamount to a
| digital company owned town. We'll see! Either way it's
| very interesting and highly relevant to the industry.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > There has been no ruling by the court on the merits of
| the case.
|
| Correct, but as part of the TRO process, the court is
| asked to view the merits of the case given what it knows,
| as part of the determination of granting a preliminary
| injunction is whether the plaintiff is likely to succeed
| on the merits.
|
| The courts opinion, quite plainly, is that Parler is
| unlikely to succeed on the merits:
|
| > In short, Parler has proffered only faint and factually
| inaccurate speculation in support of a Sherman Act
| violation.
|
| > Parler has not denied that at the time AWS invoked its
| termination or suspension rights under Sections 4, 6 and
| 7, Parler was in violation of the Agreement and the AUP.
|
| > Parler has failed to allege basic facts that would
| support several elements of this claim. Most fatally, as
| discussed above, it has failed to raise more than the
| scantest speculation that AWS's actions were taken for an
| improper purpose or by improper means.
|
| > IF data storage and/or social media can be viewed as
| critical digital infrastructure, an argument can and will
| likely be made that the services are tantamount to a
| digital company owned town.
|
| This argument will fail, for reasons I outlined in a
| previous comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25781560. To briefly
| reiterate: Marsh v. Alabama concerned a privately owned
| town using state force (e.g. police) to enforce
| trespassing law.
|
| But nothing about those rulings prevents the town from
| putting up a fence and a gate, and banning people from
| re-entering.
|
| Twitter (and AWS) have a fence and a gate, and a guard
| who checks your ID anytime you try to enter the area.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| > My point is that Packinghan, viewed in combination with
| Marsh, provides an interesting lens for issues concerning
| potentially monopolistic behavior. IF data storage and/or
| social media can be viewed as critical digital
| infrastructure, an argument can and will likely be made
| that the services are tantamount to a digital company
| owned town. We'll see! Either way it's very interesting
| and highly relevant to the industry.
|
| Seems like the core of your argument is that private
| companies could be subject to constitutional protections
| if they got too big enough/powerful.
|
| Even ignoring that you've essentially invented a new
| interpretation of US law/ignored all existing precedent,
| the fact that AWS (32% market share) isn't a monopoly by
| either common definition or as defined by federal law
| completely undercuts even such a novel legal theory.
|
| So you're on the outskirts of both law and basic facts
| here.
| timdev2 wrote:
| I don't see how Packingham or Marsh are likely to be
| relevant here.
|
| While the former has some lofty language about central
| social media has become in society, it's still a decision
| about state action.
|
| Marsh seems like a reach as well - PragerU tried that and
| it didn't work. I'm not convinced Parler would fare any
| better here.
| tptacek wrote:
| Say more!
| acdha wrote:
| Can you explain?
| mercurialshark wrote:
| Sure, I'll circle back with a longer form response in a
| few minutes. In the meantime, I find it interesting that
| people think down voting my comment will intimidate me
| into changing the analysis. That's not how legal judgment
| works. That's not how anything works...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I find it interesting that people think down voting my
| comment will intimidate me into changing the analysis.
|
| I find it interesting that you think you can read minds
| as what expectations downvoters have about their
| downvotes' effect on your behavior.
|
| As you say, "That's not how anything works..."
| mercurialshark wrote:
| I do not possess power to read minds, nor anticipate the
| court's actions. I find it all, very interesting!
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Maybe they, like me, read the court's frankly damning
| opinion and didn't find that your fact-less argument from
| authority contributed to the discussion.
|
| If you wanted to write a "long form" (?) reply then you
| could have done so. In the meantime the hand wave above
| has to stand on its own merits; or more specifically fall
| on its lack thereof.
| [deleted]
| soperj wrote:
| @mecurialshark, likely has nothing to do with trying to
| change your opinion. Likely has more to do with you
| posting your credentials as a reason to trust you but
| giving us nothing more than that.
| mercurialshark wrote:
| I'm not asking people to trust anything. It's not legal
| advice. My personal opinion is that it will prove to be
| very interesting (see below), potentially relevant to
| industry and will likely be litigated for quite some
| time.
| yholio wrote:
| Thanks, that must explain why his legal opinion below was
| downvoted to a similar degree.
| [deleted]
| freeone3000 wrote:
| It absolutely is going to be interesting, but maybe not in
| a way that's successful for them. Filing a notice of
| authority in lieu of a sur-reply is bush-league
| argumentation.
| salawat wrote:
| Please! I'm always interested by the vagueries of contract
| law, if it isn't too much trouble.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Not an attorney, but I've read all the briefs in the case
| (you can too at
| https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29095511/parler-llc-
| v-a...).
|
| Count 1 (antitrust) fails because you need to actually
| allege a conspiracy, not just say "Twitter is also a
| customer of AWS!" I mean, I immediately realized it was
| deficient on their initial brief, because they didn't even
| back up enough evidence _to satisfy their own citations_ ,
| let alone explain how they can pass the big citation they
| conveniently omit (Twombly).
|
| Counts 2 and 3 fail because the gravamen is that AWS
| violated its own contract by not giving 30 days' notice.
| Ignoring the _very_ next paragraph that says AWS can
| terminate with no notice. Their own response to that point
| in the reply brief was pitiful.
|
| Actually, their response was so pitiful they tried a second
| reply brief (that's the "supplemental authority" brief)
| where they instead changed their argument to "this is our
| reading of the contract, and you have to endorse it because
| it's a contract of adhesion." Which instead comes across as
| "we totally missed that part in the contract, and now we're
| trying to legal fu our way out of not reading a contract."
| Changing your argument on the fly doesn't tend to go very
| well in the courts.
|
| The quality of their legal briefs is not impressive, and
| when you're going up a large corporation with deep pockets
| and competent legal attorneys to defend themselves, you're
| going to have a very rough time of it.
| snoshy wrote:
| I'm curious... how so?
| boringg wrote:
| I think they probably know they have no case but are trying to
| fan the flames of the culture war to generate support and keep
| their name in the media until they find other hosting services.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| IANAL and I'm not saying I disagree with your conclusion, but I
| do think the case is more interesting than _just_ AWS booting a
| malicious customer (with regards to their TOS).
|
| > there's the fact that AWS doesn't host Twitter's feed
|
| This is funny (as in, LOL funny) to point out because it makes
| parler seem completely inept, but it's only _technically_
| correct.
|
| They just negotiated a fat contract to host twitter, and that's
| set to go live in the next few months. Can that really not be
| considered an endorsement of twitter's content with respect to
| AWS' ToS? It's not like twitter just signed up for an AWS
| account like the rest of us do. There was a bidding and
| negotiation process. Sales teams on both sides worked on that
| contract. I don't think it's so unreasonable to take the
| existence of that contract as evidence that AWS reviewed
| twitter's content and deemed it acceptable content.
|
| Why does this matter? Legally, I don't think it does. I don't
| see any good reason why AWS shouldn't be allowed to selectively
| enforce their ToS.
|
| But Parler sought to compete directly with twitter. At the time
| of account termination, they were growing at a rate of hundreds
| of thousands, maybe millions of users _per day_ , and in a way
| where it's not hard to imagine it being zero-sum (twitter users
| terminating their accounts and going to parler).
|
| I don't think the case would succeed, but I do think that
| parler can make an interesting case about AWS picking a winner
| and damaging a loser.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Why does this matter? Legally, I don't think it does. I
| don't see any good reason why AWS shouldn't be allowed to
| selectively enforce their ToS.
|
| Well, first off, it's not necessarily the case that AWS's
| contract with Twitter is the same as AWS's contract with
| Parler.
|
| But more importantly, whether or not a company chooses to
| enforce violations of contracts with third parties has no
| bearing on whether it can enforce violation of contract
| against you. The best you can argue is I think equitable
| estoppel: by not enforcing it on others, maybe they gave you
| a reasonable impression that your conduct wasn't violating.
| But AWS has a clause that says effectively "we don't waive
| any rights by not enforcing terms against you", and
| furthermore, AWS and Parler were already in communication
| about Parler's issues complying with the terms, which
| destroys any equitable estoppel claim.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _parler can make an interesting case about AWS picking a
| winner and damaging a loser_
|
| Parler made this specific allegation under the Sherman Act.
| It was rejected because "Parler...proffered only faint and
| factually inaccurate speculation in support of a Sherman Act
| violation. AWS, in contrast...submitted sworn testimony
| disputing Parler's allegations." That said, Parler "has not
| yet had an opportunity to conduct discovery," so maybe
| there's a bombshell text somewhere.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > Parler made this specific allegation under the Sherman
| Act.
|
| Well, tried to. They didn't do a good job of it at all.
| What they actually alleged (relevant towards this theory)
| was:
|
| * There was set to a mass exodus of Twitter users to Parler
|
| * AWS also hosts Twitter
|
| ... They didn't even allege that AWS conspire with Twitter.
| Sure, they don't have any evidence of that conspiracy
| without discovery, but they didn't even allege a fact that
| could be proven with discovery.
|
| These two facts are supposed to sustain the theory that AWS
| had no other reason to kick off Parler other than a
| conspiracy to keep Twitter the dominant platform. Despite
| the complaint itself opening up by alleging that AWS kicked
| off Parler because Parler espouses conservative views and
| later conceding that Parler knew that its content violated
| AWS's terms, albeit Parler was attempting to rectify it.
|
| There's another issue with Parler's claims that I haven't
| seen anyone else bring up: if Parler was expecting the
| influx of Twitter users as a result of Twitter banning
| Trump, how would kicking off Parler keep these users on
| Twitter or otherwise buttress Twitter's dominance?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > This is funny (as in, LOL funny) to point out because it
| makes parler seem completely inept, but it's only technically
| correct.
|
| This is one of the cases where technically correct _is
| actually_ the best kind of correct, because it goes directly
| to Parler's claim that Twitter is a similar situated entity
| hosted on AWS being treated differently.
|
| > They just negotiated a fat contract to host twitter, and
| that's set to go live in the next few months. Can that really
| not be considered an endorsement of twitter's content with
| respect to AWS' ToS?
|
| Um, no?
|
| (1) Because if Twitter is under the standard TOS, they'll be
| subject to the same reactive enforcement and quick
| cancellation as anyone else. Bringing someone on on those
| terms simply means you have the same trust as you'd extend to
| a random member of the public that they won't break your TOS.
|
| (2) Since they just "negotiated a fat contract", they may or
| may not even be under the same TOS as are offered to people
| who just want to pick up hosting without negotiation. Which
| would be even farther from an endorsement of their content
| adhering to the general TOS.
|
| > I do think that parler can make an interesting case about
| AWS picking a winner and damaging a loser.
|
| Its possible that they could do so in the abstract, but they
| _have_ made an argument along those lines, and its pretty
| clear that that concrete argument, as opposed to any
| hypothetical one they could have made, was, in the context of
| the particular evidence they've profferred to support it,
| unconvincing to the judge.
| perlgeek wrote:
| A bit off-topic, but after reading this and a few other court
| decisions (for example in the context of contesting election
| results), it strikes me that they are pretty well-written.
|
| They provide context for a lay audience, and while their
| language isn't simple, it is understandable to a non-native
| speaker like me.
|
| Is this usual? or is it that for such cases with high
| publicity, the courts select judges that are know as good
| writers?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| This is pretty normal. Judicial decisions are, in general
| (though not all of this applies to every decision) written to
| be read by people remote from the decision (either in time or
| otherwise) and be clear, to justify themselves in the case of
| appeal, to make clear to the parties what the expectations
| are of them under them, and to make clear to future courts
| (including the same court) what was determined and why to
| support proceedings to enforce, modify, etc., the results.
|
| There's an extensive body of specialized knowledge and
| terminology in the law, and a lot of that comes through
| making short-hand out of bits of decisions or enactments for
| the convenience of having brevity in reference, but with
| decisions clarity, both of results and reasoning, is a pretty
| big goal.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I've been trying to come to grips with the societal impact of
| echo chambers, "hate" speech, and the obligations vs. rights of
| sites and hosting providers.
|
| So far, my take is that websites have less obligation than
| hosting. It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform
| for speech issues - I am leaning more and more to the idea that
| colos, IaaS and ISPs should be considered common carriers, and
| that only a court order should get a site booted off the web
| entirely.
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| There is no material reason why Parler can't host their own
| hardware, whereas it's unrealistic for someone to start their
| own ISP.
| OniBait wrote:
| I would suspect that it would give Twitter pause about hosting
| anything in AWS. But I doubt that is the case because there
| seems to have been a pretty clear-cut case of collusion between
| Twitter, Apple, Google and Amazon to silence Trump by any means
| possible.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I worked for a very small hosting company and we had to
| automatically detect and remove bitcoin miners because they
| were so common, I can't even imagine what AWS deals with. If
| AWS had to get a court order every time someone tried to do
| something illegal, or against TOS on their platform, the courts
| would be flooded immediately.
| umvi wrote:
| > I worked for a very small hosting company and we had to
| automatically detect and remove bitcoin miners because they
| were so common, I can't even imagine what AWS deals with.
|
| Huh? Why shouldn't I be able to mine bitcoins on AWS? That's
| literally the point of stuff like Lambda. I pay Amazon for
| every unit of memory-time my code uses. So if I put a bitcoin
| miner on there, I'll rack up a huge bill, but why should
| Amazon care as long as I have the cash?
| fjabre wrote:
| I agree with this completely. You just send them further
| underground.
|
| There is no 'but' as people would have you believe here. But
| they are Nazis. But I don't agree with them. But they cause
| riots and violence. There's always a 'but'.
|
| Only a court order should have the power to shut these sites
| down and that's only if they present a clear and present
| danger.
|
| This is clearly a cultural cleansing of sorts. I remember other
| such cultural revolutions. China comes to mind.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| > It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for
| speech issues
|
| They booted Parler off for violence issues. One may personally
| disagree about where to draw that blurry line, but I think
| there's more than enough plausible deniability here. This is
| not the trigger of a grand slippery slope. If Amazon drops a
| company purely for non-violent political differences, by all
| means, lets raise those pitchforks.
| zamalek wrote:
| > They booted Parler off for violence issues.
|
| It baffles me how often violence issues become conflated with
| speech issues. You are absolutely correct, this is a violence
| issue.
|
| America has likely the most free speech protections in the
| world, but fighting words (violence) are not protected. There
| is a huge amount of precdent to support Amazon's actions
| here, dating back decades.
|
| Furthermore, just because Facebook did nothing is no reason
| for Amazon to sit idly by doing nothing. Is the advocation
| for Amazon to become another bystander? Is the superior
| situation to have all platforms supporting and enabling
| insurrection and possible sedition? Get off it. Amazon can
| make the right choice irrespective of their peers making the
| worst choice.
| fjabre wrote:
| If that's true then pretty much every social media platform
| today should be banned from AWS.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| Because violence to advance a cause the powers agree with
| is suddenly protected under free speech all the same.
|
| Many have pointed out that the storming of the capitol was
| not too dissimilar to many of the _b.l.m._ riots which were
| also often coordinated and featured chants of killing
| police officers.
|
| And it very much seems that whichever side one be on very
| much dictates how both are treated with both sides claiming
| that it is about violence irrespective of speech, but it's
| quite clear that the tolerance for violence is quite a bit
| lower when it concern an ideology one does not agree with.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| The sentiment you're trying to express here is empathy.
| There is more empathy for people protesting racial
| injustice and the murder of minority groups than there is
| for people waving hate group symbols and trying to kill
| political leaders. I don't see a need to demand a system
| void of empathy.
|
| It's not a one side issue. It's not right vs. left. In
| the case of parler, it's largly Nazi vs. not Nazi, and
| that's a particularly easy case to judge. Parler does not
| represent conservative America, even if the extremists at
| the rally claim otherwise. It represents a mix of violent
| hate groups and conspiracy theorists. The small
| proportion of BLM activists that were actively violent do
| not represent liberal America.
|
| Everyone has a choice. Everyone identifying as
| conservative can point at the white supremacists in DC
| and say "Those are my people" or "Those are not my
| people".
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| > _The sentiment you 're trying to express here is
| empathy. There is more empathy for people protesting
| racial injustice and the murder of minority groups than
| there is for people waving hate group symbols and trying
| to kill political leaders. I don't see a need to demand a
| system void of empathy._
|
| Every man considers the group for which he fights
| oppressed and the group that fights against him a "hate
| group", and every man has cherry picked statistics to
| show it.
|
| > _Everyone has a choice. Everyone identifying as
| conservative can point at the white supremacists in DC
| and say "Those are my people" or "Those are not my
| people"._
|
| And the same applies to the the more extreme and violent
| parts of the _b.l.m._ movement.
|
| As is usual, and as I criticized, you cherry pick the
| most violent parts of "the other group" to make your
| point, while showing the more moderate of your own to
| front them as the good guys.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Apparently mostly facebook was used, not parler.
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| Wait till you hear what us leftists want to do with
| Facebook!
|
| I will say that my preferred solution to the problem of
| Facebook (nationalization and open criminal investigations
| into its leadership) actually raises serious constitutional
| issues. The Parler case really really doesn't - it doesn't
| even raise good philosophical issues about free speech,
| just a bunch of dumb arguments.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Sure, maybe? Doesn't mean parler wasn't a toxic violent
| place. If you want to hold facebook to a higher standard,
| by all means, I agree.
| [deleted]
| snoshy wrote:
| This smacks of whataboutism to me. No doubt Facebook hosted
| large amounts of this activity, but it does not negate the
| fact that Parler did so as well. Amazon's court filing
| detailed hundreds of incidents that they had given Parler
| months to fix.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Crying "whataboutism" is just a meme-y way to shutdown
| claims of hypocrisy.
|
| Husband: Two glasses of white wine in one night honey?
| You need to cut back for your health's sake
|
| Wife: But dear, you drink a handle of vodka every night
| and have refused any attempts at intervention.
|
| Husband: A-ha, classic whataboutism
| snoshy wrote:
| Facebook isn't even a party in this legal proceeding. The
| only ones are the court, Amazon, and Parler. Facebook
| could commit genocide tomorrow, and it would not affect
| this lawsuit.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Where's the hypocrisy? Should AWS drop facebook as a
| customer?
|
| I don't think anyone is suggesting that Facebook is free
| of guilt, but there is evidence that Facebook does at
| least try to keep their site clean, and for the most part
| they do. Its certainly possible that Facebook had (in
| absolute terms) more violence and planning than Parler,
| but as a percentage of the overall content, it's much
| smaller.
|
| This doesn't excuse Facebook, they can do better, but it
| isn't hypocritical to say "the group with 10% violent
| content that tacitly encourages it isn't okay, while the
| group with .1% violent content that actively innovates in
| trying to keep things clean is okay".
|
| Of course, that's only true if FB is actively innovating,
| and, well, that's questionable (Yann Lecun has made some
| concerning statements about Facebook's role, or lack
| thereof, in radicalization).
| duskwuff wrote:
| You're conflating two different issues.
|
| Some of the specific, concrete _planning_ of violence may
| have taken place on Facebook. That doesn 't appear to have
| been taking place as much on Parler -- possibly because it
| was less private -- but there was plenty of generally
| violent rhetoric on Parler, just less specific. "We should
| kill this person" (Parler) versus "Let's all meet up with
| our guns here" (Facebook).
| throwawayboise wrote:
| These things _always_ start with moves that sound completely
| reasonable. Only time will tell if they expand their
| moderation demands.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Sure. And yet, completely reasonable things overwhelmingly
| tend not to lead to extreme outcomes. Only time will tell,
| but the point is that this is hardly an urgent warning
| sign.
| svachalek wrote:
| Indeed, this line of thinking is known as the Slippery
| Slope Fallacy:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
| multjoy wrote:
| What are _these things_ , specifically?
| Y-bar wrote:
| > First they came for the nazis and qanon extremists
| threatening democracy, and I said nothing because fuck
| those people, they are the reason this verse exists.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| I would note, the original line is something along the
| lines of "i did nothing because I wasn't one of them".
|
| The line genuinely doesn't hold up as especially powerful
| when its "I did nothing because they self identify as a
| hate group against people like me"
| aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote:
| So, stop doing completely reasonable things then?
| JeremyBanks wrote:
| If you choose to just call it "speech issues", it sounds
| worrying, but when you're a little more precise, "shutting them
| down for failing to remove calls for violence _including many
| instances pointed out to them directly by Amazon 's lawyers_"
| sounds pretty reasonable.
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| I am very sympathetic to the idea that ISPs should be common
| carriers, but definitely not colos and platforms like AWS.
|
| Let's use an old-fashioned analogy. An ISP is like a post
| office, and people's letters should not be meddled with
| (outside of violent threats or pursuant to a legal criminal
| investigation). In particular, ISPs are relevant to most
| individuals and ISPs (should) have respect for individual
| rights. But large platforms like AWS are more like large-scale
| mail printing and distribution, and is only really relevant to
| commercial enterprises. Such companies might choose to work
| with Sears to distribute catalogs, but decide not to work with
| Scientologists to distribute propaganda. They can be judicious
| in their choice of business partners without violating any
| individual rights - nobody has a right to any commercial
| partner they want. And in this case, AWS's freedom of
| association rights (deciding not to do business with groups
| that aren't federally protected, like the racist trolls who run
| Parler) are much more relevant here.
|
| AWS refusing to do business with Parler is not the same thing
| as Comcast refusing to allow access to things written by
| Parler's users. It is more like Amazon's Kindle Direct
| Publishing refusing to put racist screeds in an ebook.
| echelon wrote:
| If we had a fully P2P and distributed architecture for
| information exchange, this wouldn't be a problem.
|
| As it stands, we choose centralized websites and platforms to
| be how we exchange information. They're an essential
| ingredient in the "common carrier" recipe.
|
| How can your parents share messages without Comcast +
| Facebook?
| vlunkr wrote:
| We choose to use centralize platforms out of convenience,
| but if Facebook magically disappeared, people would
| immediately move to one of the many alternatives.
| echelon wrote:
| That's not even a counter argument. It's a platitude.
|
| You don't even need to conjure "magical disappearance".
| Social networks often come and go as fads. YikYak,
| Snapchat, TikTok.
|
| The thesis of what I said is that P2P mechanics are
| largely invariant of and shielded from business
| decisions, social mores, etc.
| bob33212 wrote:
| E-mail
| echelon wrote:
| Is email the predominant form of communication people?
|
| How many teenagers are raving about sending memes over
| email?
|
| edit: My point isn't to say email isn't an instance of
| federated/p2p communication, but rather we need _more_
| types of communication to be run on P2P rails. Social,
| forums, media...
| bob33212 wrote:
| There are two separate issues:
|
| 1. Is it good that a few people at a few large companies can
| decide what is and isn't acceptable speech in America.
|
| 2. Do media companies have the right to end business
| relationships with companies who they feel violate their
| contracts and Terms of Service.
|
| The obvious answer to #2 is yes. Otherwise you would be forcing
| Fox News to run adds calling all Fox News viewers racists, and
| forcing MSNBC to run adds with racial slurs in them.
|
| There isn't a clear answer to #1.Do these people have a
| conflict of interest? Who would do a better job? Biden? Trump?
| richardARPANET wrote:
| 3. Corporations and the government are MERGING in the USA.
|
| Biden just hired a tonne of ex-big tech staff to work on tech
| oversight policy, lol.
| xoa wrote:
| > _It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for
| speech issues_
|
| I'm sorry for the caps but you and a host of others are
| forgetting something repeatedly and it's getting fairly
| annoying:
|
| AMAZON HAS FREE SPEECH RIGHTS TOO.
|
| Just as Parler does, and you do, and I do, and Twitter does,
| and the various owners and employees of these organizations do,
| and on and on. It's Free Speech all the way down. And a
| fundamental aspect of Free Speech isn't just the right to say
| something, it's necessarily the right to _NOT_ say something,
| and to _NOT_ provide material support against your will to
| speech you disagree with. If you or I or anyone else or any
| general organization decides to _NOT_ provide help to someone
| else 's speech, be it our own direct voice or access to our
| private property, that's not censorship that is itself Free
| Speech. They in turn have the right to complain, and to
| exercise their own freedom of association, and we may change
| our minds, or not, and others can chime in, and on and on
| forever. Free Speech is a _system_ not an end goal, a constant
| churning that hopefully over long enough timescales will give
| us a better grasp of Truth.
|
| When government uses force, that halts the system, and speech
| becomes frozen. History and present indicates that the bar for
| that, though not infinite, should be quite high. Some companies
| that truly have natural monopolies or exercise quasi-
| governmental power may fall into that too, particularly if they
| in some way are significantly making use of government power
| themselves (limited spectrum allocation for cellular carriers
| for example, or physical infrastructure companies making use of
| public rights of way). But social and economic censure is a
| fundamental aspect of the process of Free Speech. 3rd parties
| aren't some disembodied Other, they're entities that have the
| same rights as anyone else by default.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I feel like if some religious nut has to make a gay wedding
| cake then Amazon has to serve websites for their political
| enemies. This is a moral statement and not a legal one.
| notahacker wrote:
| The wedding cake makers ultimately won. And only found
| themselves in court because of legislation protecting
| against refusal of service on the grounds of sexual
| orientation: nobody could have raised legal objections if
| they declined to make a cake that said 'God Is Dead', 'Sex,
| Drugs and Rock and Roll' or 'Vote For Pedro'
|
| Nobody is forced to make a wedding cake with a long stream
| of racist invective like one of the examples Amazon
| suggested might fall foul of its AUP a month before all the
| Capitol fallout (and Parler replied that they absolutely
| wouldn't take down) and I think that's for the best.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I feel like if some religious nut has to make a gay
| wedding cake
|
| You know, in _Masterpiece Cakeshop_ , people treating them
| as religious nuts was a factor in why they _didn't_ have to
| do that.
| umvi wrote:
| Should Verizon and T-Mobile have free speech rights too then?
| Why should they allow literal Nazis to communicate over their
| infrastructure?
| xoa wrote:
| > _Should Verizon and T-Mobile have free speech rights too
| then?_
|
| Try reading the _whole_ paragraph (emphasis added):
|
| >particularly if they in some way are significantly making
| use of government power themselves ( _limited spectrum
| allocation for cellular carriers for example_
|
| Come on.
|
| > _Why should they allow literal Nazis to communicate over
| their infrastructure?_
|
| Because they're making use of a government granted monopoly
| on a physically limited common. They should in turn operate
| as common carriers.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Why does it only apply to things that are physically
| limited? Isn't that just a bad analogy?
|
| Other things are limited too. People's time and attention
| are limited, and the app stores have a pretty strong
| duopoly on those.
|
| In theory you could print pamphlets and drop them door to
| door, but come on.
| umvi wrote:
| > Because they're making use of a government granted
| monopoly on a physically limited common. They should in
| turn operate as common carriers.
|
| Hmm, not always though. I use WiFi 99% of the time,
| including for voice calling, which isn't using any
| government-allocated cellular spectrum. So in my case,
| T-Mobile should be able to filter packets going through
| their servers and censor undesirable speech, right? Their
| servers, their ToS, right?
| dhimes wrote:
| More than free speech, they have Free Market Rights.
| Ironically, those bitching about them removing Parler are
| usually the strongest supporters of the Free Market.
| bob33212 wrote:
| Exactly. Where were they when Christian Bakers didn't want
| to sell cakes for gay weddings?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Well I'm clearly not an advocate of fully free markets when
| there are natural monopolies or societal interests higher
| than profit.
|
| And I'm not bitching, I'm discussing.
| Blikkentrekker wrote:
| If what users on, say _Twitter_ say constitute it "saying
| something" then perhaps it should remove the standard
| disclaimer of how the opinions expressed thereon are that of
| their users, and not their own, and be held personally liable
| for what is posted on there.
|
| When it suit these platforms, they claim that the opinions
| are of their users and not their own, yet when it otherwise
| suit them, they claim ownership.
| xoa wrote:
| > _If what users on, say Twitter say constitute it "saying
| something" then perhaps it should remove the standard
| disclaimer of how the opinions expressed thereon are that
| of their users, and not their own, and be held personally
| liable for what is posted on there._
|
| Why? Hacker News, or Twitter, can say things for itself,
| and it can also host other people's opinions. There is no
| collision there. Twitter has Free Speech rights, and is
| responsible for, whatever it says itself. Twitter also has
| the Free Speech right to support, or not, anything it likes
| since it is in no way quasi-governmental. It doesn't owe
| anyone a soap box. And there is no reason it should be held
| liable for what users say, the users who say those things
| should be held liable.
|
| > _When it suit these platforms, they claim that the
| opinions are of their users and not their own_
|
| The law, and common sense as well is clear. Words of their
| users are not, in fact, theirs. The only thing regular law
| gives them is protection from not being completely perfect
| in their attempts at exercising their own Free Speech vs
| other people on their own property, rather than having to
| use Common Carrier all-or-nothing. But they could ban
| whomever they liked regardless.
|
| > _yet when it otherwise suit them, they claim ownership._
|
| Specify. They own their own words and their own resources,
| and necessarily users must offer them at least a limited
| non-exclusive license for reproduction due to copyright.
| That is a fair tradeoff offer for what their users gain,
| and everyone may accept, or not.
|
| Which ones "claim ownership" of other people's words and
| how? They don't need any ownership for bans, because nobody
| is entitled to their support.
| fjabre wrote:
| Amazon also has monopolistic power and has destroyed many
| industries.
| scohesc wrote:
| Parlers goal of being the alternate free speech platform is
| horrendously thought out.
|
| The same companies and that they are trying to remove influence
| from (Silicon Valley - amazon, twitter, facebook, etc.) are the
| same companies that they're doing business with.
|
| Gab is ridiculous and I get a very religious "holier than thou"
| (lol) vibe from them. Their founder(s) are very puritanical and
| will likely not survive the next few years.
|
| The true future of free speech is through federated
| platforms/services similar to how email servers were back 20-25
| years ago. People have traded freedom for convenience over the
| past couple of decades and it shows.
| benburleson wrote:
| It wasn't even that their goal was to be a "free speech
| platform," they existed specifically as a platform for radical
| conservatives (only).
|
| If they cared about free speech, they wouldn't have aligned
| with any specific ideology.
| richardARPANET wrote:
| Gab is great and will survive long into the future because
| users of the website pay to use it. Rather than being sold to
| advertisers. Value for value exchange.
|
| Look past the religious aspect and you'll see the content on
| there is much less toxic than on Twitter.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| > The true future of free speech is through federated
| platforms/services similar to how email servers were back 20-25
| years ago.
|
| Isn't the whole problem for Parler that no major providers will
| host their servers? How would federation help? You need a full
| P2P layer, fully decentralized, routed over Tor to prevent
| blocking by ISPs.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| Good points but I'd go a bit farther and say that the same
| companies they are trying to remove influence from are the same
| companies _they [parler] are becoming or will become_.
|
| The idea that parler or gab is somehow "freer" or less censored
| than any other site seems untrue. They are more tolerant of a
| certain political identity and less tolerant of another one.
|
| It's just replacing their boogiemen with one of their own
| design.
| bazooka_penguin wrote:
| Somewhat agree. These are ultimately politically reactionary
| platforms. Not making a value judgment, but they're clearly
| geared at winning over conservatives to their platforms and
| are intended to be platforms for right wingers. That may mean
| tolerating everyone else while they're growing and trying to
| gain clout but I can see that changing quickly once they have
| power.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| I think the future of controversial speech is in closed,
| private groups on large platforms. Those fly under the radar
| and can escape public pressure, which has the side effect of
| easing pressure on Facebook to halt the "controversial"
| discussions. This is why violent protests will likely continue
| to be primarily organized on high profile platforms like
| Facebook.
| jki275 wrote:
| I have watched significant centrist websites go closed or
| semi-closed over the past two weeks, deleting or closing
| historical data, removing seo, disallowing public indexing,
| etc.
|
| So yes -- this is probably how it will go, it's already
| started.
| phoe-krk wrote:
| > People have traded freedom for convenience over the past
| couple of decades and it shows.
|
| I'd argue the completely other way: people have traded
| convenience for freedom. The convenience of using the Internet
| for has massively eroded freedom of speech.
|
| It's been immensely convenient for tens of thousands of people
| to be able to say any kind of harmful trash on the Internet
| without suffering any negative consequences and that's what
| they have been doing for years now, and so now we all pay the
| price.
|
| The term "freedom of speech" has been appropriated by alt-right
| and modern Nazi movements and is now associated almost strictly
| with, which means that it is now _feasible_ to call this
| freedom a real and actual risk to human life and take real
| steps towards curbing that freedom in general, even for people
| who are not _ab_ using it to actively work towards harming
| other people.
| throwaway45349 wrote:
| Another problem is the term 'harm' (just like 'freedom of
| speech') has also been poisoned by those on the left who
| would have you believe words are more dangerous than actual
| violence.
|
| When actual discussions and conversations cannot take place
| under the guise of pretend harm, real violence happens.
|
| I do wholeheartedly believe the attack on the capitol is just
| the result of a disenfranchised part of the population who've
| been shit on and deplatformed for the last 4 years by the
| establishment (including Orange Man, FWIW).
| criddell wrote:
| I wholeheartedly believe the attack on the capitol is the
| result of racism and hatred being spewed unchecked on
| Twitter and Facebook (and other smaller platforms). The
| loudness and accessibility of it worked to recruit
| susceptible people building a small group of angry people
| into a movement.
|
| If anything, the problem is that they weren't deplatformed
| early enough.
| bitwize wrote:
| If you do not believe that words cause actual harm, then
| you don't know anyone who's been in an emotionally abusive
| relationship.
|
| There is no shortage of women with PTSD from such
| relationships who've spent the past four years continuously
| triggered because Trump acted just like an abusive
| boyfriend or husband, and it was difficult to avoid him on
| the news or on social media.
| [deleted]
| splistud wrote:
| Well said
| throwaway45349 wrote:
| Thank you.
| OniBait wrote:
| What I find scary and disheartening is that people have to
| use throwaway accounts to even point this out.
| throwaway45349 wrote:
| Using a throwaway for anything political is just safer. I
| can comfortably talk about this with friends or
| colleagues, but I wouldn't broadcast it to the whole
| world with my name attached.
| tesmar2 wrote:
| Gab is doing great and growing like crazy.
|
| Edit: Downvoted for facts.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I guess some people may interpret "doing great" as an opinion
| and not a fact, although it depends on what you meant by
| that... it could be a fact.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I don't know why you are being downvoted, from what I've read
| they have added a ton of users in the past few weeks. I think
| the Parler move is backfiring, prior to that it seemed like a
| battle between dozens of alt-social networks all trying to
| gain a foothold and after the Parler move it looks it
| everyone displaced from the traditional social media
| platforms has decided on Gab.
| duxup wrote:
| The 'free speech platforms' almost always skew towards the
| extremest side (more so over time)and aren't anything about the
| benefits we think of when it comes to free speech, lots of
| ideas that can be discussed, and we can think about and learn
| from.
|
| I wonder how that can be avoided.
| scohesc wrote:
| Unfortunately, I don't think it can be avoided - you can't
| have freedom of speech without having the worst of the worst
| be able to speak.
|
| I dislike the people that support facist, racist beliefs, but
| I 100% will defend their right to say such things. In my
| opinion, once you start talking about restricting speech, you
| get into the grey area - who decides what speech to restrict?
| Off the top of my head, the most "capable" organizations
| would be either:
|
| - The companies who run these glorified advertising platforms
| (which would regulate speech based on "how much money will we
| lose?"), or
|
| - a Governmental body (which by its nature has a monopoly on
| violence - "if you say something we don't like, your social
| credit score goes down and you can't leave the country or we
| throw you in jail"). I think freedom of speech is a very
| large part of what makes America distinctive from other
| countries.
|
| - Alternatively, we could have whoever the loudest
| complainers are control speech, which would be very
| reactionary - driven by misinformation or coordinated culture
| change campaigns(?)
|
| If the people with abhorrent opinions decide to start causing
| direct physical harm to people in reality - that's when
| police, government, etc. should step in and penalize them -
| not social media companies or governments, or the vocal
| minority determining what people should and shouldn't say.
| duxup wrote:
| I worry less about having the worst of the worst speak, as
| it is platforms inevitably trend extreme as folks either
| drop off or are pushed out and the result is just a one
| sided platform without some heavy handed moderation.
|
| Here's I think the real issue, we make discussion
| platforms... people don't want to discuss. They just want
| to put up and push posters of what they believe.
|
| And we're surprised when things go wrong.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I think the main issue is that people expect free. And free
| means ads (unless some billionaire is going to fund it out of
| pocket). And ads means you can't have child porn and terrorism
| on your platform.
| smackmybishop wrote:
| AWS is neither free nor ad-supported.
| MBCook wrote:
| I believe they were talking about Parler, not who is
| hosting them.
|
| An issue they would run into in the future.
| echelon wrote:
| AWS wouldn't exist if the web had been P2P.
|
| If YouTube was based on BitTorrent.
|
| If Facebook was based on Diaspora, Mastodon, Scuttlebutt,
| etc.
|
| If Messenger was based on Matrix.
|
| Centralized platforms make ad revenue, form moats, and
| become big business. Hosting isn't their core competency,
| so they outsource. Thus AWS.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Unfortunately nobody has figured out how to do
| decentralized discovery/recommendation. Google Search
| centralizes discovery for the web, Facebook centralizes
| discovery for the social graph, YouTube centralizes
| discovery for the videos, Whatsapp centralizes discovery
| for chat.
| jwond wrote:
| > ads means you can't have child porn and terrorism on your
| platform.
|
| Doesn't seem to be true in the case of Twitter
|
| https://nypost.com/2021/01/21/twitter-sued-for-allegedly-
| ref...
| minikites wrote:
| A lot of free market advocates sure seem bent out of shape when
| the free market works against them for once. Amazon shouldn't be
| required to host violent hate speech and I don't understand how
| someone can believe in "the free market" and argue otherwise.
| alkonaut wrote:
| Can they really expect to be reinstated? Suing for breach of
| contract and demanding compensation I can understand.
| throwaway45349 wrote:
| As much as I don't like Parler's digital death sentence from
| Silicon Valley, they should've known this was coming and
| prepared. It doesn't take a genius to know that such a
| controversial website is going to get dropped, even if it's just
| because it makes the webhost look bad.
|
| Yes it's unfair that Twitter gets away with hosting way worse
| content, but life is unfair, that doesn't mean you stick your
| head in the sand and pretend the risk of de-platforming never
| existed.
| samrmay wrote:
| I've heard other people say similar claims (about Twitter
| hosting equal/greater amounts of hate speech, threats, etc.).
| Totally plausible and I wouldn't be surprised if it were
| definitively true, but have there been any data driven studies
| to back it up?
|
| Don't know if sentiment analysis ML algorithms are powerful
| enough to do something like this, but there has to be some
| scientific consensus on the relative hateful content that each
| site allows right? Or at least some pretty graphs.
| albinofrenchy wrote:
| Does twitter get away with hosting way worse content? Parler
| explicitly does not moderate calls both subtle and overt to
| violence -- much less just blatant propaganda. Pretty sure the
| reason parler gained traction is that twitter does.
| [deleted]
| throwaway45349 wrote:
| If you saw the amount of left-wing content calling for the
| execution of politicians, calling for communist revolutions,
| you wouldn't be asking this question. Twitter is just as
| toxic as Parler, except one is left-wing and the other is
| right-wing.
|
| If it was the left being censored I would be outraged on
| their behalf as well.
|
| Edit: Not if, _when_ the left gets censored by big tech, I
| will stand for freedom of speech with them, but I don 't
| think many conservatives will be left to stand with us.
| 8note wrote:
| Twitter is left wing? I thought it was mastodon that was
| left wing version
| gdulli wrote:
| The fact that each side believes Twitter is in favor of
| the other one should clue them both in to the very
| obvious truth that none of this is partisan to Twitter.
| They're only afraid of liability since people have now
| died.
| iamdbtoo wrote:
| You're completely ignoring the catalyst for this was that a
| governement insurrection where 5 people, including some
| cops, were murdered was planned very heavily and also
| broadcasted on this service.
| throwaway45349 wrote:
| The capitol stuff was organised on Facebook, not Parler:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25776225
|
| What about the Summer violence from BLM? Dozens of people
| died, with Twitter being used as a communications hub to
| attack specific individuals.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I also distinctly remember more fires, property damage,
| and calls to ruin peoples lives during the summer.
| possibleworlds wrote:
| Dozens is a bit disingenuous, and you are comparing a
| protest movement over the course of many months involving
| up to 20 million people. How does this have any relevance
| to anything?
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Glenn Greenwald reports that the planning was actually
| done mostly on Facebook and Youtube, not Parler:
| https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-
| sho...
| richardARPANET wrote:
| Exactly. And now the leftists down vote you for presenting
| facts.
| freedomben wrote:
| If you listen to the Megyn Kelly interview with Parler's CEO,
| they did expect this and had a second entirely different
| hosting provider lined up. They would have made the move by the
| deadline too, except the second hosting provider _also_ dropped
| them due to extreme pressure.
| throwaway45349 wrote:
| I do believe that should've also been in their threat model -
| these guys should've acted like they were hosting The Pirate
| Bay 2 given the state of American politics. For instance,
| they could've had a low-traffic backup in read-only mode, or
| prevent new sign-ups. Or have an application layer switch to
| reduce outgoing bandwidth (HTML only) to squeeze into a coloc
| facility on short notice.
| analyte123 wrote:
| Somebody leaked an email where they were soliciting new
| hosting, and they needed 100+ giant instances. They were
| clearly sloppy and inefficient from the very beginning.
| Threeve303 wrote:
| Engineering the site well to stay online might be beside
| the point now. Parler wanted to be taken down so that they
| could fight this legal battle, likely with an eye on
| Section 230. As an added bonus, they can frame the removal
| as persecution.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Clearly it's a battle they're likely to lose, but I wish
| them luck.
|
| The only way forward in my view is to actually change
| laws. Anything short of that, is a fool's errand. All
| this is already settled law and has been litigated
| previously multiple times. You have to change the law in
| order to reclassify these entities if you want things to
| change.
|
| What orgs like Parler keep doing right now is spitting
| into the wind.
| snoshy wrote:
| I'm not sure if I agree with that. Outside of unabashed
| copyright infringement and grossly objectionable content
| (child porn, etc.), there hasn't been a real precedent for
| a tech player getting booted like this on a moment's
| notice. If a scenario has never occurred before, I don't
| see why you'd add it to your threat model.
|
| That being said, they did not have the engineering
| expertise to even make a resilient stack on top of AWS. If
| you're running a free trial version of Okta to secure your
| assets in production [1], all of what you're proposing is a
| distant dream.
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/okta/status/1348191370528256002
| 8note wrote:
| OFAC compliance seems like an obvious comparison?
|
| If your company gets put on an terrorist list, you'll be
| removed from US services very quickly.
| ogre_codes wrote:
| > Yes it's unfair that Twitter gets away with hosting way worse
| content
|
| Nonsense. Parler was created to host content which Twitter
| blocked and users which Twitter banned. Not suggesting Twitter
| was in the clear here, but suggesting Twitter was worse is BS.
| Parler tolerated much worse content, and on average content on
| Parler was much more incendiary.
| nostromo wrote:
| It's worth noting how much soft power the political left in
| America has, despite being about 50% of voters.
|
| Hollywood, Silicon Valley, academia, and the news media all
| lean left. This means you should expect to have an uphill
| battle if you want to do anything in these areas that might
| counter their preferences.
|
| I think all this soft power actually hurts the left in America,
| because our country's default state is a bit of an echo-
| chamber. It's possible to go to university, watch movies, read
| the news everyday, and have no idea what the other half of the
| country is thinking or saying.
| NathanKP wrote:
| My personal opinion: I don't think Parler is about political
| left vs political right. There are plenty of folks on the
| political right who also don't want to be associated with
| QAnon, insurrection, death threats, and the other stuff that
| went on in the Parler posts. Don't fall into the trap of
| boxing this just into 50% vs 50%.
|
| The reality of the US is: 33.7% of Americans didn't even vote
| in 2020, 34% voted "left", 31% voted "right" (the rest of the
| votes went to third party candidates). Those who voted on the
| right are further subdivided into even smaller groups. One of
| those smaller groups on the political right side includes
| extremists who attacked the capitol.
|
| Distaste for Parler, due to the actions of some of those
| extremists who were using it actually crossed political
| boundaries: folks who didn't vote, folks on the "left" and
| even folks on the "right". The shunning of Parler isn't about
| "soft power" on the left its about the fact that a small
| group of people managed to do something so reprehensible that
| a LOT more than just 50% of people felt that association with
| them was tainting.
| [deleted]
| bredren wrote:
| If it were a dichotomy as you suggest, it might also be worth
| looking at why "conservative" or "right" leaning groups have
| not made inroads in these areas.
|
| I believe it is because to be break out successful in any
| medium that demands an array of skill you must not
| discriminate against people: The company must not have or
| create a forum for a culture of exclusion.
|
| That is to say, it should not matter if a person is gay if
| they are skilled in acting, coding or teaching. They are
| welcomed for their talent.
|
| However, these "right leaning" groups typically are at best
| on the back foot of accepting the reality of diversity. And
| are often financially backed by people who seek to make laws
| that restrict the freedom of others to protect some existing
| homogeneous power structure.
|
| So lack of traction in these industries is because you can't
| constrict the talent pool to fit a narrow idea of what a
| completely equally protected human is and expect to get
| enough talent to be very successful.
| bredren wrote:
| Down voters might find my comment above as not a new idea:
| The Economist began advocating for Gay Marriage in 1996.
|
| This 2004 article includes discussion of the benefits of
| acceptance:
| https://www.economist.com/leaders/2004/02/26/the-case-for-
| ga...
| andrekandre wrote:
| not to take away from your point and be too pedantic, but i
| think maybe left and liberal are being conflated?
|
| actual bonafide leftists have very little real political
| power in ths u.s afaik...
| maxsilver wrote:
| Yeah, as far as I can tell, America doesn't have any
| meaningful left-wing politics of any kind. There's not a
| single left politician elected to any federal office
| anywhere in the nation, for example.
|
| Hollywood (the industry funded by the US Military to put
| pro-military-industrial-state advertisements into movies)
| is not "left leaning" in any meaningful way. "News Media"
| all lean either slight-right (MSNBC, NPR) to hard-right
| (Fox News, NYT, WSJ). Silicon Valley is primarily driven by
| right-leaning "libertarian" conservative types (at both big
| corps and small startups). Democrats are largely all
| conservative (in that, Democrats of 2021 mostly all hold
| identical views to what Republicans used to hold in the
| year 1998)
|
| We do have a few centrist politicians and groups (Bernie
| Sanders / AOC+Squad, etc), and a few centrist movements
| (rights for LGBTQ+, or "Defund the Police", for example, is
| largely politically-centrist initiatives).
|
| But I'm not aware of even a single left-leaning politician
| in any federal elected office. For example, no elected
| federal politician is advocating for the nationalization of
| all private corporations, or elimination of all for-profit
| entities, or for a complete cap on individual wealth, or
| for giving Hawaii back to the aboriginal Hawaiians, or
| anything like that, that could be considered a full-left
| position. (But meanwhile, on the right, there _is_ a
| meaningful ultra-far-right political movement arguing that
| we should ignore replace democratically-elected officials
| with dicatorships, for example. And that group _has elected
| members_ sitting in the House + Senate _today_ )
| Tokkemon wrote:
| I'd love to live in your reality, but it ain't true. The left
| isn't the ones storming the Capitol.
| [deleted]
| xxpor wrote:
| When you have polarization along educational and age lines
| with the left on the higher education and younger side, it's
| inevitable they'll have cultural power.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| I'm not American but having browsed Parler for say half an
| hour, if that is supposed to represent 'the other half', then
| I pray for the country.
|
| I don't think American news media or academia or Silicon
| Valley skews left. It skews ... urban and educated? Silicon
| Valley seems libertarian-ish, news and media seems like they
| do in every other country. From here it doesn't even look
| like the US has organised, left-wing political actors.
| standeven wrote:
| Do they lean left, or is it that reality has a well known
| liberal bias?
| triceratops wrote:
| It's worth noting how much actual political power the right
| in America has, despite being about 50% of voters.
|
| The Senate and electoral college favor them massively. This
| means you should expect to have an uphill battle if you want
| to change any laws that might counter their preferences.
| whatshisface wrote:
| A business that is heavily involved with local government
| has to sweat Republican politics, a business that is
| heavily involved with technology, the media, or other forms
| of nonstate power has to sweat Democrat politics. I guess
| it would be nice if companies could simply focus on getting
| their job done and not have to sweat anyone's politics at
| all.
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| It would be nice if it were possible to be apolitical but
| in many respects it isn't depending on the nature of your
| business and that's a reality I think some people are
| reticent to accept. Corporations exist to make money and
| there isn't an industry out there that doesn't actively
| lobby in their interest.
|
| Turns out being `apolitical` is kind of a myth.
| xxpor wrote:
| Politics is the the practice of how to organize society.
| There's no such thing as an apolitical entity. At the
| most basic level, just the fact that corporations exist
| is itself a political decision.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Sure, with a sufficiently expansive definition of
| political everything is, but in the comment above,
| "politics" meant "dealing with the preferences of." So
| the local Republican politician would want stuff if you
| wanted to build your chemical plant, maybe a new baseball
| field, maybe campaign contributions. Your Democrat-
| aligned hosting provider would want you to not run the
| center of operations of their enemies. You are using
| politics in the academic sense, where two kids playing
| tag are engaging in politics, but that is not the only
| thing that "politics" can be used to describe. Companies
| should follow the law, not politics.
| 8note wrote:
| Companies should do what their owners want per
| capitalism. If that's politics, the company should do
| politics.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Sure, but the political system should not be such that
| the owners of the companies have anything to gain by
| wanting their companies to do politics.
| esoterica wrote:
| Companies have to obey laws and laws are written by
| politicians. Unless you think companies should be above
| the law they cannot, and should not be expected to, avoid
| thinking about politics.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Thinking about the law is a world away from thinking
| about politics. Companies should think about how to
| comply with regulations, but they should not be biting
| their nails over whether the candidate who's backing
| their chemical plant will give a speech about Marijuana
| decrimininalization that's convincing enough to secure
| him the position necessary to force the local regulatory
| body to change the acceptable limits on effluents so that
| it becomes possible to continue running a process on an
| old line.
| mc32 wrote:
| One set of influencers is elected and held to account, the
| other is largely unaccountable.
| triceratops wrote:
| > One set of influencers is elected and held to account
|
| Are they, though?
|
| > the other is largely unaccountable
|
| No the market will hold them to account.
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| First, the first set isn't a set of influencers. They
| directly legislate law.
|
| Second, the other is accountable to the same laws as
| anyone else.
| fjabre wrote:
| This is false. The left now has the Senate and the
| Presidency.
|
| The electoral college does not matter. They go the way
| their states go as was made quite clear in the last
| election.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| The electoral college absolutely does matter and
| absolutely does favor right wing politicians (for now).
| Every state gets a minimum of three electoral votes
| regardless of their population, so as a result, a single
| vote in a sparsely populated state like Wyoming has up to
| four times the influence that a single vote in a densely
| populated state like NJ has. The current political make-
| up of the country is such that right-wing politicians
| find far greater support in rural areas and thus are
| favored by the electoral college. So far only right-wing
| politicians have managed to win the electoral college
| without winning a majority in the popular vote.
|
| Similar logic applies to the Senate: regardless of
| population every state gets two senators. Right-wing
| senators have received fewer actual votes (by individual
| voters) than left-wing senators for years, yet in that
| time right-wing control of the senate has been more
| common than left-wing control. Right now the split in the
| Senate is 50-50 (Vice President, a Democrat, breaks the
| tie) but the total number of votes cast for Democratic
| senators was much higher than the number cast for
| Republicans.
|
| You literally have to deny reality when you deny that the
| electoral college and the senate represent a structural
| advantage for Republicans right now.
| fjabre wrote:
| Yeah what an advantage they had going into the election.
|
| Looks like it really worked out for the Republicans.
|
| Reality must line up with your arguments.
|
| If what you say is true, Trump would be president right
| now.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The left now has the Senate and the Presidency.
|
| The key term is "now". After getting about 40m more
| votes. Be honest. Is that balanced?
| fjabre wrote:
| Was just pointing out it's quite clear that the nation
| itself is left leaning. That's honest by the numbers.
|
| To say the Republicans have any kind of advantage right
| now except for maybe the courts is incorrect.
| xxpor wrote:
| You can not seriously argue the EC doesn't matter when
| the republicans have won the popular vote once since 1988
| yet have held the presidency for 3 terms.
| fjabre wrote:
| It's just a bunch of State puppets who do the State's
| bidding in almost all cases.
|
| Each state gets numbers by its population. Great.
| Forefathers intended it this way. I think that's fair.
|
| It stops a giant mob from overpowering the system.
|
| I don't think a direct democracy would work in the US. I
| like representative democracies.
| minikites wrote:
| The Senate is split 50-50, but the 50 Democrats represent
| 41 million more people than the 50 Republicans:
|
| https://twitter.com/AriBerman/status/1352293847385124864
|
| If voting in this country wasn't suppressed at the local
| level by Republican state governments, the federal
| government would look very different. It would be much more
| diverse and representative of real Americans, not just
| white male Americans.
| cairoshikobon wrote:
| Banning speech by half the population is not "soft power"
| anymore in the world we live in.
| ssully wrote:
| When did half the population have their speech banned?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That'd be true, if it happened.
|
| Plenty of conservatives left on Twitter.
| jki275 wrote:
| 50 Senators are Democrats or caucus with them, and the
| Electoral college just put a Democrat in the White House --
| so you can't really make such a claim with a straight face.
| triceratops wrote:
| I said "favors". The 50 Democratic Senators represent 40m
| more people than the 50 Republican Senators. It's far
| easier for the balance to tip right than left.
|
| The electoral college was decided by about 40k votes this
| time, and about 80k votes last time. The popular vote
| margin was in the millions. That should tell you
| something about how far the EC is from reality.
| jki275 wrote:
| "popular vote" has absolutely no bearing on anything in
| this discussion. The US is not a direct democracy, it is
| a representative republic.
|
| The 50 senators who represent semi-conservative states
| represent the same number of states as the 50 who
| represent more liberal states.
| 8note wrote:
| Yeah, the obvious thing is to split LA, and New York into
| 5 different states each, so that the liberals gain more
| power in the senate.
|
| The state level representation of the senate is very
| arbitrary
| triceratops wrote:
| > The US is not a direct democracy, it is a
| representative republic.
|
| I'm aware of that. And that structure favors one side
| more than another. This is not a controversial statement
| - the numbers (y'know, facts and logic) back that up.
|
| States are lines on a map. In the current setup they have
| more influence than the actual people living in those
| states. Do you seriously not see how that can lead to
| disproportionate representation of some views?
| modriano wrote:
| The Democratic Presidential candidate has won the popular
| vote in the last 7 of 8 Presidential elections[0], with the
| Dems having, on average, about 5 million more votes for
| those 8 elections. It's empirically fair to say the right
| represents about 45% of voters (which makes their power
| even more noteworthy).
|
| [0] year,dem_candidate,dem_votes,gop_candidate,gop_votes
|
| 1992,Bill Clinton,44909806,George H. W. Bush,39104550
|
| 1996,Bill Clinton,47401185,Bob Dole,39197469
|
| 2000,Al Gore,50999897,George W. Bush,50456002
|
| 2004,John Kerry,59028444,George W. Bush,62040610
|
| 2008,Barack Obama,69498516,John McCain,59948323
|
| 2012,Barack Obama,65915795,Mitt Romney,60933504
|
| 2016,Hillary Clinton,65853514,Donald Trump,62984828
|
| 2020,Joe Biden,81268867,Donald Trump,74216747
| nostromo wrote:
| The electoral college actually favored Biden this time. He
| got 57% of EC votes, which is much higher than his share of
| the popular vote.
|
| This is all pointless anyway for a union of states. Germany
| is underpowered compared to Luxembourg in the EU _by
| design_ -- the same is true in the US. Should California
| ever go back to being conservative, as it was until
| Clinton, it will disadvantage Republicans just the same.
| triceratops wrote:
| Sorry, you're saying the US should be _more_ like the EU?
| triceratops wrote:
| > The electoral college actually favored Biden this time
|
| I think we're operating on different definitions of
| "favored". The definition I'm using (and which most of
| the English-speaking world uses) is "have a fundamental
| advantage". He won the electoral college narrowly. He won
| the popular vote handsomely. That's a sign of a thumb on
| the scale in a pretty fundamental way.
| nostromo wrote:
| > He won the electoral college narrowly. He won the
| popular vote handsomely.
|
| He didn't though. He won 57% of the electoral vote and
| 51% of the popular vote.
| triceratops wrote:
| Another way of looking at it though, is he won the
| electoral college by a margin of 40k votes (the margin of
| victory in the states that mattered). He won the popular
| vote by a margin of 7m votes.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > Hollywood, Silicon Valley, academia, and the news media all
| lean left.
|
| citation needed.
|
| Silicon Valley is a monument to capitalism and most if not
| all entrepreneurs lean libertarian.
|
| As for the news media, as an example, Fox News has the
| highest viewership in the US. And for the others, ever
| thought about why you're not seeing a lot of coverage about
| unions/worker rights/worker strikes? Don't mistake anti-Trump
| rhetoric with 'left leaning'..
|
| So I'm not sure we're you're getting your 'data' from.
| newfriend wrote:
| So capitalism is right-wing now? Oh let me guess, this is
| the old "Democrats are actually right-wing", right?
|
| > As for the news media, as an example, Fox News has the
| highest viewership in the US.
|
| Yes _one_ channel is different than every other, of course
| viewership is concentrated there -- all the lefty viewers
| are spread out over the remaining channels.
|
| If the other news channels aren't "left-wing" then Fox
| isn't "right-wing", and everything is meaningless. There
| isn't a large population of commies or nazis in the US,
| despite what the media would have you believe. Both parties
| are pretty near the center, with some individual outliers.
| tptacek wrote:
| The premise of Parler directly contravenes the AWS AUP, which
| demands that companies ensure their users comply with AWS's AUP
| and that companies kick users that don't. The whole point of
| Parler is to host Twitter users who violate Twitter's TOS,
| which is a cohort significantly comprised of people who are
| also violating AWS's TOS.
|
| To believe that Parler would have been viable on AWS to begin
| with, they had to actively avoid reading the AWS terms of
| service. And, I mean, I'm sure they didn't, just like they
| apparently didn't authorize anonymous HTTP requests for their
| users assets. The whole effort seems clownish and performative.
|
| In that light, I think I object to the notion of a "digital
| death sentence". They chose an incompatible provider for the
| services that they needed, and suffered the consequences. Gab,
| a service that is objectively far worse than Parler, appears to
| be doing just fine; in fact, they went through something
| similar to this after the Tree of Life shooting was planned on
| their service, and Parler had to have not paid any attention
| whatsoever to what happened to their most important competitor
| to have believed they had a chance on AWS.
| throwaway45349 wrote:
| I get it, companies do not legally have to provide these
| services to right-wing groups persecuted off of Twitter. I'm
| saying that it's _morally_ wrong to deplatform.
|
| Not necessarily because I enjoy having this speech hosted,
| but because isolating and pushing out so called "deplorables"
| is escalating the current American political conflicts to
| serious violence.
|
| As I said in my other comment, when the disenfranchised can't
| speak, they get violent. If you disagree with these people,
| say that to them. Cutting them off from the mainstream public
| squares like Twitter and Facebook just creates a new
| generation of radicals.
|
| Silicon Valley used to stand for freedom of speech for a
| reason.
| clusterfish wrote:
| > If you disagree with these people, say that to them
|
| That doesn't seem to be working in a post-truth world. Not
| sure what the solution is, but this isn't nearly enough.
| throwaway45349 wrote:
| We live in a post truth world because of social media
| algorithms, which made that content successful. I think
| we need to heavily regulate those ASAP.
| mewse wrote:
| > isolating and pushing out so called "deplorables" is
| escalating the current American political conflicts to
| serious violence.
|
| Can you provide references that back up this claim?
|
| Bear in mind that the deplatforming began after January 6th
| of this year, so any escalating violence which may have
| occurred on or before that point is not evidence of your
| claim. And after the events of the 6th I imagine it'd be
| difficult to compose a compelling argument that _not_
| deplatforming prevents violence.
|
| In any case, the only news on the topic that I've seen has
| been that election misinformation on Facebook/Twitter has
| dropped by 70% since the deplatforming happened on those
| platforms[1]. That isn't directly about violence, but
| presumably will result in less alt-right radicalisation,
| since their ability to reach new people is reduced. Though
| obviously it's much too early to have a good understanding
| of the long-term impact of actions like this.
|
| Which is why I'm so curious about how you're making
| statements like this as if they're plain facts. I'm super
| interested to see any references you can provide!
|
| [1]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/01/16/m
| isinfo...
| throwaway45349 wrote:
| The deplatforming has been going on for years, since at
| least 2016 when Trump was elected in the first place. In
| Twitter's case[0] they went after smaller users (edgy
| "russian bots") until ~2018, when they really ramped
| things up. This even hit left wing (anti-establishment)
| activists[1].
|
| One of the conclusions of a recent purge by Reddit was
| that it just pushed the banned users into even more
| radical spaces online[2].
|
| Of course we all know about The Streisand effect, and one
| article suggests that censorship just draws more
| attention to the banned content[3]. If we assume that
| ideas are somehow "contagious" or "infectious"[4] then
| we're just exposing people to them even more.
|
| > In any case, the only news on the topic that I've seen
| has been that election misinformation on Facebook/Twitter
| has dropped by 70% since the deplatforming happened on
| those platforms.
|
| But the deplatforming didn't make those people go away,
| it pushed them to platforms like Gab and Parler, right-
| wing echo chambers. This is like an extreme version of a
| filter bubble. Remember, millions of people supported
| what happened at the capitol[5], and there is zero hope
| of de-radicalising people if the left and right aren't
| talking. If anything, both sides will get more extreme.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deplatforming#Twitter
| (see references)
|
| [1]https://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-political-
| account-ba...
|
| [2]http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-
| hate.pdf
|
| [3] https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=htt
| ps://th...
|
| [4]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00546-3
|
| [5]https://www.statista.com/chart/23886/capitol-riot-
| approval/
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > One of the conclusions of a recent purge by Reddit was
| that it just pushed the banned users into even more
| radical spaces online[2].
|
| You should re-read it. It offers that as a _possibility_
| , with terms like "may" and "could have". It does not
| conclude it _did_ happen; it notes that _some_ users
| migrated, but that 's not at all surprising.
|
| The hardcore folks are likely to always wind up
| somewhere, but driving them off Reddit likely makes it
| more difficult to recruit less initially strident users.
| As the study indicates, "the ban worked for Reddit".
| tptacek wrote:
| This is spawning a lengthy subthread but because you asked
| me, just for the record, I don't care about the competing
| moral claims. I'm just interested in what the law says
| here. The moral stuff never seems to converge to any kind
| of real insight on HN, but the legal stuff has a right and
| a wrong answer that we can hope to reach by debating it.
| HALtheWise wrote:
| Does anyone know how the AUP of Amazon and other services
| interacts with E2E encryption? For example, Signal uses AWS
| to host many of there servers, if Amazon discovers that
| people are using Signal to share unsightly content, can the
| demand that Signal kick those users off the platform? If
| Signal's processes and technology aren't capable of doing so,
| can AWS demand they change that?
| tptacek wrote:
| I think the right mental model to have here is that AWS can
| boot any customer that becomes problematic for them,
| including Signal. It seems unlikely that you can skirt
| their AUP terms by constructing a service that makes it
| impossible for you to comply with their terms.
|
| Amazon can enforce their contracts selectively. The
| contract isn't a statute; it's an agreement between two
| parties. Amazon could presumably strike up a side agreement
| with a customer that overrode the "master" contract. I'm
| not a lawyer, but stuff like that happens in consulting
| somewhat regularly, where you have an MSA governing all
| your projects, and specific contracts for weird projects.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Twitter signed a big contract with AWS immediately prior to
| Amazon killing one of Twitter's competitors (Parler). And
| Twitter has a serious problem with child trafficking, open
| support for calls to violence, etc.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| I think a big part of this is accepting Amazon's claims as
| fact, which I would not. For example, Amazon claims Parler
| was not moderating when in fact Parler had some pretty strict
| moderation enforcement. One could make an argument of whether
| or not it was successful "enough" and you'd have to compare
| it to other industry leaders like Facebook and Twitter which
| both have copious amounts of child pornography, calls for
| violence, etc.
|
| What I've seen is basically some screenshots of some bad
| posts, which doesn't tell me anything about what was really
| going on in a very large and complex system.
| [deleted]
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > It doesn't take a genius to know that such a controversial
| website is going to get dropped, even if it's just because it
| makes the webhost look bad.
|
| Parler wasn't dropped for making Amazon look bad. Parler was
| dropped for repeatedly failing to address blatant terms of
| service violations.
|
| AWS still hosts the National Enquirer, the magazine that
| literally tried to blackmail Jeff Bezos. AWS is hardly in the
| habit of removing sites that make them look bad.
|
| Parler has gained a reputation for being some sort of free-
| speech platform, but it was anything but. They had heavy-handed
| moderation that routinely banned people and removed content for
| not agreeing with the popular sentiment. They made a deliberate
| choice to continue to leave explicit calls to violence on their
| website, and they were removed from AWS for it.
|
| Twitter doesn't have perfect execution of their moderation
| across all of their tweets, obviously, but they are at least
| making a good faith effort to remove content that has explicit
| calls to violence.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > Twitter doesn't have perfect execution of their moderation
| across all of their tweets, obviously, but they are at least
| making a good faith effort to remove content that has
| explicit calls to violence.
|
| Isn't that mainly due to their amount of revenue? Are newer
| services supposed to be shut down because they can't(yet?)
| compete with Twitter on budget for moderation?
| duskwuff wrote:
| Moderation scales with the size of the site. Obviously a
| tiny little web forum with a few dozen users isn't expected
| to have a Twitter-sized moderation team -- but if you're at
| a few million users and growing fast, you're expected to
| have some plans in place.
| richardARPANET wrote:
| Dropped by Amazon, in coordination with both App Stores just
| as it reached #1 ranked app. Really really interesting.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Not everything is a grand conspiracy. Sometimes society
| really isn't okay with what you're doing.
| salawat wrote:
| It's not society not being okay with they are doing that
| makes it intersting.
|
| It's that the subjects of multiple anti-trust probes and
| companies known for on the down colluding in the past
| happened to be the ones pulling the plug.
|
| You can argue it was "everyone" having a problem with it,
| but keep in mind that the Valley is not "everyone".
| That's the funny thing about conspiracies. Everyone whose
| in on it flatly denies it, even when it is obvious.
|
| Not saying there was one mind. Just pointing out that
| assuming "management in the Valley" who have go/no-go on
| firing customers equates to "everyone" not being okay
| with it. It does not build confidence to many when
| unilateral decisions by execs shape the landscape for
| everyone else. Also yes, some of that population who
| aren't okay with that likely buy in to more conspirarial
| thought as well. Doesn't change the facts of the matter.
| richardARPANET wrote:
| Exactly, it's not a conspiracy if they're telling you
| they're doing it:
| https://twitter.com/Policy/status/1349059276975857664
|
| It's a big club, and you ain't in it.
| Spivak wrote:
| Also I think dogpiling is often confused, intentionally
| or not, as conspiracy. It seems like a lot of people
| really really wanted to drop them but weren't brave
| enough to make the first move.
| bdamm wrote:
| Similar to how a car accident is interesting, perhaps. My
| wife checked out the site just to see if it was really that
| bad. She concluded it was. No doubt many installed it for
| the same reason.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| You'll find that large corporations tend to average out to
| having _fairly_ similar thresholds for "oh, these guys can
| fuck right off from our service".
|
| No conspiracy is needed. Same thing happens in
| neighborhoods - assholes tend to get a reputation as "the
| asshole neighbor" pretty rapidly. There doesn't have to bee
| a neighborhood meeting to decide this; it just happens.
| kyrra wrote:
| If you listen to Parler's CEO arguing about being shut
| down[0] (interview with Megyn Kelly), he was saying that
| their tech rep at Amazon gave no hints that they were in
| danger of being shut down. It sounded like they were doing a
| decent job and they tried to remedy Amazon's issues, but
| Amazon wanted nothing to do with them anymore.
|
| EDIT: to add, this is just his take. There is obviously
| 2-sides to the story, so hard to know the full truth here.
|
| [0] https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdh
| cGh...
| duskwuff wrote:
| > he was saying that their tech rep at Amazon gave no hints
| that they were in danger of being shut down
|
| And I wouldn't expect them to do so! They're a tech rep,
| not a legal rep.
| echelon wrote:
| So deplatforming by surprise is okay?
|
| Facebook and Twitter don't own their data centers. If the
| DCs responded to the same pressure about hosting illegal
| content, the social media giants would disappear too.
| takeda wrote:
| > Facebook and Twitter don't own their data centers. If
| the DCs responded to the same pressure about hosting
| illegal content, the social media giants would disappear
| too.
|
| Not true, they do have own data centers.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Facebook and Twitter don't own their data centers.
|
| Facebook certainly owns quite a few.
|
| https://www.facebook.com/careers/life/facebook-
| infrastructur...
|
| They lease some, but some are definitely custom built
| just for them:
|
| https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/facebook/facebook-
| plans-...
| duskwuff wrote:
| No, literally all I'm saying is that a technical support
| liason at AWS is not going to be in a position to discuss
| legal issues regarding the customer's account. It's not
| their job. If AWS operates similarly to most other
| companies I've worked with, technical support staff are
| strictly forbidden from discussing legal issues -- that's
| the responsibility of the legal department.
| minikites wrote:
| What leads you to believe the Parler CEO is a reliable
| narrator?
| kyrra wrote:
| 100% agree, he has a reason to paint a certain narrative.
| (I added my edit before you replied I think).
|
| Either way, without knowing the full picture from both
| sides (like a court case going through discovering to
| fully put out the communciations between Amazon and
| Parler), we don't know the answer. We see that Amazon
| canceled Parler with little external communication. And
| we see what Parler is saying. Amazon could share what
| they communicated with Parler (assuming they legally
| can), then we could see another side to this story.
|
| It would be nice for this court case to go through
| discovery, then we'll know who said what and when. But
| until then, we have very imperfect data and have to weigh
| it as best we can.
| notahacker wrote:
| I've seen a copy of an email exchange between Amazon and
| Parler from Nov/Dec (which is difficult to Google for at
| the moment) which was shared publicly.
|
| Amazon bring up some examples of posts that concern them.
| Parler say they will look at the post that constitute
| actual threats but have a policy of not removing content
| like the post that's just a long, content free screed of
| racial abuse. That alone can easily be considered
| violation of Amazon's conveniently broad AUP.
|
| Amazon appear not to have chosen to terminate or threaten
| to at the time, presumably on the basis they were getting
| plenty of money and relatively little grief for hosting
| them, but it puts a very different perspective on the
| idea that Parler was caught completely by surprise, and
| would have cleaned up everything they could if only
| they'd had more time and resources.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| Parler's CEO claims were debunked by Amazon, which provided
| evidence that they warned Parler for months across multiple
| multiple violations: https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2021/01/filing-amazon-wa...
| jariel wrote:
| There is way, way too much room for political manoeuvring here -
| we should all be scared.
|
| Facebook is used to coordinate literal genocide. [1]
|
| And so AWS everyone is cool with that?
|
| I get that Parler was being used to do something 'violent and bad
| in the US' and that there was arguably not enough oversight - so
| they are a 'problem case'.
|
| But the system is a little bit hypocritical, I don't feel it's
| backed by science or some kind of reasonable application of
| policy and frankly, I have little trust in the judicial systems
| ability to sort this out.
|
| While many people are happy 'That Guy' is gone from politics (for
| now) - we need to wake up to the crude realization that 'regular
| politics' was never fair or reasonable to begin with and that
| this issue is going to weaponized by those who think they can do
| that, and they will use 'Parler and 'President Voldemort' example
| as cover for whatever it is they want to do.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-
| facebo...
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| What does it mean, concretely, to "wake up" to this
| realization? I certainly acknowledge that Amazon might make bad
| content moderation decisions in the future, and if they do I'll
| speak out against those decisions. I just don't follow why I'd
| need to do something about that today.
| jariel wrote:
| Because the insurrection on capitol hill provides the cover
| of legitimacy for people to act in a manner that also may be
| very inconsistent and politicized.
|
| Jeff Bezos owns news publications, he has a worldview and
| likes to flaunt it to some extent, moreover, these systems
| are prone to the possibility of arbitrary, and often
| political decisions.
|
| Note that historically, rich dudes bought newspapers to
| attack their political and business rivals. Though I don't
| think it's entirely like that today, we can't say there isn't
| some of that going on.
|
| Literally Emamnuel Macron and Angela Merkel have spoken out
| about the arbitrary 'banning' of groups and individuals, and
| because there is an 'imminent consideration over here in the
| US' doesn't abnegate our broader concerns about arbitrary
| banning.
|
| The EU will likely be acting on it.
|
| Banning the KKK is not something anyone is worried about.
|
| Banning some app because we don't like the extent to which
| they have moderated their discussions, is a much more
| slippery slope. Especially in light of other institutions
| that don't moderate very well either.
|
| If the case could rationally be made that FB and Twitter are
| in the end, equally problematic in their moderation ... then
| it's likely they would not get banned from various places -
| they have money, power, influence and possibly friendly
| relations with other platforms.
|
| It's a dangerous precedent and the EU leaders are essentially
| correct to speak out and even more so to act.
| elldoubleyew wrote:
| I don't understand what's keeping the Parler team from just
| standing up their own servers in a garage somewhere. Its still an
| early stage platform, and its not like they were experiencing
| explosive growth as far as I understand.
|
| This seems like a perfect use case for a small home server. If
| they find a revenue stream then they can scale to renting some
| rack space somewhere. I know its not as easy as clicking a button
| in AWS but its not totally debilitating.
| jki275 wrote:
| I think you underestimate their size. They were a lot larger
| than a home server.
|
| As far as hosting, it can certainly be done privately, but it
| requires more work than cloud hosting, as gab learned when they
| went entirely internally hosted.
| navbaker wrote:
| I've been seeing posts from some of my more conservative friends
| pop up in my FB feed advertising their imminent departure for
| MeWe. My surface level Google research tells me MeWe bills their
| service as "lightly moderated". I'm wondering how long before the
| spotlight gets turned on them and they're forced to either up
| their standards or face the same fate?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's not obvious to me that the spotlight has any special
| powers to make companies adopt high moderation standards. 4chan
| is still up, after all.
| [deleted]
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| 1. Democratic party threatens tech industry with heavy regulation
| because they don't censor to the degree that the Democrats want.
|
| 2. Democratic party takes over control of the government.
|
| 3. Major companies in the tech industry work together to boot a
| competitor, and political opponent of the Democratic party off
| the internet.
|
| At what point is this a legit first amendment issue? The
| government can't just pressure private companies to do things the
| government can't do and then hide behind the fact that they are
| private entities, right?
| AnHonestComment wrote:
| Welcome to fascism.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| An alternative framing:
|
| 1. Republican party threatens teach industry with heavy
| regulation if they censor to the degree that the tech industry
| wishes to.
|
| 2. Republican party looses power.
|
| 3. Major companies in the tech industry do what they wanted to
| do the whole time.
|
| At what point is (1) a first amendment issue? The government
| shouldn't pressure private companies to do things that violate
| those groups first amendment rights.
| travisoneill1 wrote:
| This would be an issue, but I dispute point 1 because the
| leaders of the tech industry would very much like to wash
| their hands of politics and be seen as neutral platforms so
| they can save money on moderation. Most of these same
| platforms pretty much had an anything goes unless it's
| illegal attitude from the time they were started until a few
| years ago when they started getting a lot of political
| blowback and blame for "helping Trump" by not moderating
| more.
| esoterica wrote:
| They can't sell ads next to terroristic threats or other
| forms of extremism. So they would absolutely need to
| moderate even without political pressure.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| > This would be an issue, but I dispute point 1 because the
| leaders of the tech industry would very much like to wash
| their hands of politics and be seen as neutral platforms so
| they can save money on moderation.
|
| No, they'd like to be approachable by the broadest groups
| possible (or really the broadest set of ad-viewing groups
| possible). Calls to violence are unappealing to most
| people. This is the reason unmoderated platforms fail:
| people don't enjoy spending time on them. To be palatable
| to normal people, the sites need moderation, which they do,
| to appeal to users.
|
| > Most of these same platforms pretty much had an anything
| goes unless it's illegal attitude from the time they were
| started until a few years ago when they started getting a
| lot of political blowback and blame for "helping Trump" by
| not moderating more.
|
| This is completely untrue. Here's one of the first Trump
| related posts I can find:
| https://www.fastcompany.com/3054611/when-does-hate-speech-
| cr..., notably "Though it apparently violated Facebook's
| own internal guidelines, Trump's video was not removed".
|
| They've been, since the beginning, getting blowback for
| making exceptions for politicians instead of evenhandedly
| applying their policies. What you've seen over the past 5
| years is simply the platforms growing in influence (and
| thus controversy).
|
| The act of not moderating trump when he violated existing
| policies was an attempt to appear neutral to conservative
| users, while actually biasing to more loosely moderate a
| particular conservative. I can only hope platforms have
| learned from their mistakes.
| 8note wrote:
| On a similar vein, the president breaks all the policies of a
| web service, and the company that runs it does not kick him off
| due to fear of retribution by the government.
|
| It seems like Twitter's free speech has been limited for the
| past 4 years, and they've only been able enforce their policies
| once trump stopped having power
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Wasn't Parler booted by Amazon before Step 2?
| sjansen wrote:
| Not really a surprise given the weakness of their arguments.
|
| If you'd like to hear a lawyer read and comment on their
| complaint, I recommend https://youtu.be/FL7r-Nt5j50
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Vive Frei has done a good job breaking down the lawsuit:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkiZKk4_-lA
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| Honestly Parler just needs to park their front end someplace,
| don't think anyone would be the wiser if they used AWS on the
| backend for their database/storage.
|
| But on the other hand Parler's tech people seem mediocre so who
| knows if they could manage to not leak AWS ips or headers that
| would tip off they are using AWS and allow Amazon to figure out
| which account. Would only take one slip.
|
| If they pay their bills and it wasn't dead obvious AWS was
| involved then Amazon might not try hard to find them.
| philshem wrote:
| Parler, or at least their data, is ironically back on AWS:
|
| https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Parler
| paxys wrote:
| This is a great thread summarizing Parler's case and Amazon's
| response -
| https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/134916216569825280....
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