[HN Gopher] Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut ... ___________________________________________________________________ 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.... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-21 23:00 UTC)