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Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#351

Post by bArray »

EpicEng wrote: post #279
bArray wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened > to have some disgusting content on it. You can't state that as fact. The platform itself was not inherently about spreading objectionable material. It was about being more free than Twitter. > And I have yet to hear anyone discuss how "anything goes" > and social media do not mix. As with all free speech, it had legal limits, such as threats of violence.…

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBxXcAAuTkC?format=jpg&name=... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgBuXYAAB4y2?format=jpg&name=... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ErTzgB3XIAcffGC?format=jpg&name=... https://i.redd.it/q2151lxlfpa61.jpg These were not taken down

For the first link, there was just one upvote in 23 hours. For the second link, there was 6 up and 3 down votes in 2 days. The third link has all information removed, to the point it can't be verified. The fourth link had four upvotes probably in 1 day or more.

There's no doubt the material is objectionable, but it was only up for a short time and got very little reach, even getting negative reactions within their own circles. And bare in mind, these aren't exactly random examples either - this is supposed to represent the very worst - and it's just some random people with little reach who get negative reactions from their own followers.

Meanwhile over on Twitter you've got people sharing a picture of Trump's severed head, you've got "Hang Mike Pence" trending as a hash tag, you have people celebrating the death of the lady who got shot in the capital, etc.

Perhaps a little context?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#352

Post by macinjosh »

explorigin wrote: post #70
mgkimsal wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I poked around on it some, and noticed something ... disturbing. I saw what I assumed were bots posting a lot of garbage links to 'articles' like "Obama compound raided!" and "8 Democrats switch to Republican Party" (that actually happened in Feb 2020, but the link was to an undated rerun and the link was posted.. 2 days ago?). The links were to such trustworthy sites as 'firstusanews.us' (made up, but all variants l…

I was also curious about Parler but, when going to sign up, it asked for my phone number. Ummmm, no thank you. That kind of association is like going to a protest with your cellphone. Pretty easy to get the wrong kind of association attached to you.

> Pretty easy to get the wrong kind of association attached to you.

How sad is it that our free society has turned into this? So much for tolerance.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#353

Post by 6sup6 »

cs-szazz wrote: post #77

Serious question, it seems AWS is by no means a monopoly on web hosting (Google, Azure, Digital Ocean, Linode, the list goes on). It seems to be they're well within their rights as a company to not host Parler, and Parler can try to go somewhere else. If no other companies want to host Parler, isn't that more a reflection of Parler than the hosting companies? It doesn't seem like they should be obligated to host, sin…

I would put my money that if Parler goes to any of the web hosting services you listed, they will still be deplatformed.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#354

Post by himujjal »

zmb_ wrote: post #321

I'm struggling to try to understand what this means for the risks of running a business in the cloud going forward. It was not just AWS dropping them, but many of their other vendors dropped them too, essentially killing their business overnight. Granted, for this first case the bar was extremely high. You needed literal storming of the Capitol and a platform seemingly specifically targeted at those people for this t…

exactly. look at whatsapp now for example.

from being one of the most privacy friendly faces of the mobile to being portrayed as privacy invader (i know messages are E2EE). but see the effects. things happen slowly.

did amazon or big tech do the right thing here? probably yes.

did they see that their influence is massive? yes. (they already do know, just stirring up their convictions stronger now)

Is there a chance in future that they might just misuse their powers without anyone knowing it? most certainly yes.

Its a real trolley problem for me as a privacy supporter.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#355

Post by qez »

chasing wrote: post #41

Parler wasn't some innocent social media site that happened to have some disgusting content on it. The disgusting content was literally its reason for existing, despite all of the bland "we're just a free speech site" stuff. And I have yet to hear anyone discuss how "anything goes" and social media do not mix. It's much easier to turn a community toxic than it is to keep it healthy, and healthy communities (of any so…

The term healthy is doing a lot of work for you. If you mean signal/noise ratio, then yes, and HN truly optimizes for that, so it makes sense that you're here. But HN doesn't optimize for total amount of signal, for example, buried underneath a lot of noise. Personally, I care about content a lot more than I care about "community."

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#357

Post by Closi »

munificent wrote: post #310
mozillalives wrote: post #44

All I’m going to say is that I’m all for free speech and setting fair rules for everyone to play by (ie regulation), but looking at the examples provided in the buzzfeed articles this is beyond simple free speech. I hear a lot of people saying this is just another example of the left trying to shut down free speech but there are clear threats being made on the platform. If Parler doesn’t want to do any content regula…

> I hear a lot of people saying this is just another example of the left trying to shut down free speech This is a specious argument on its face. The First Amendment does not say that private companies are obligated to spend money broadcasting someone else's speech. Hosting and serving isn't free and any private company has the freedom to decide what not to host. If an author's content is so toxic that advertisers wo…

> This is a specious argument on its face. The First Amendment does not say that private companies are obligated to spend money broadcasting someone else's speech. Hosting and serving isn't free and any private company has the freedom to decide what not to host.

I'm in the UK, but the difference is that right now, these private companies control communication.

I'm not allowed outside my house and I live alone. I'm not even allowed outside to go and talk to friends - people are getting fined and arrested for just sitting on a park bench because of the latest lockdown. All my communication with everyone I know is done via private companies. If they lock me out, I'm totally screwed. What is free speech if I can't talk to anyone? Are the phone companies allowed to lock me out if they don't like what I'm saying?

So one could argue, that actually if we want free speech in the 21st century, and want to honour the intent of what it means to have free speech, there does need to be some protection here.

The protections around freedom of speech were put in at a time where it was inconceivable that a huge majority of worldwide speech could be mass-monitored and auto-censored by a few giant private companies that self-police what can and can't be said - and I think the legislators would have been horrified!

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#358

Post by causalmodels »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #176
rnikander wrote: post #169

Does anyone else think it's suspicious that they built everything on AWS? I mean, if you know you're going to take heat for your content being less moderated, wouldn't you diversify your infrastructure? I wonder if someone wanted this to happen, in order to increase support for certain legislative action?

Why would they know they would take heat for their moderation policy? Are there any other examples? I can't think of any. Edit: I mean examples where companies lose access to core services due to their moderation policy. I know twitter and facebook get shit for theirs all the time, but nothing substantive ever happens.

I think Gab [1] is a relevant example. They were dropped by their GoDaddy, Stripe, PayPal, etc. after the tree of life shooter posted their manifesto on the site. Another example would be Cloudflare dropping 8chan [2] after the El Paso shooter, Christchurch shooter, and Poway synagogue shooter used the site to post their manifestos. Cloudflare also dropped support for the neo-nazi website The Daily Stormer [3] although my impression is that the reason for termination was deeply related to people on the website claiming their continued business relationship signaled ideological sympathy on the part of Cloudflare [4 -- about halfway down]

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/28/far-right-social-network-g...

[2] https://blog.cloudflare.com/terminating-service-for-8chan/

[3]https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

[4] https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-cloudflare/

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#359

Post by macinjosh »

driverdan wrote: post #342
tomcam wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of this is true, but I believe. I'm guessing you aren't from the USA, but here, "disgusting content" is completely covered under the concept of freedom of speech. Our Supreme Court has already ruled that there's no Constitutional idea of "hate speech". The concept of freedom of speech is here to protect things that other people think are despicable. This whole deplatforming thing will have vast unintended conse…

Free speech doesn't apply to non-government resources. A company can ban any speech they want. Plus there is speech that isn't protected, like certain violent threats, which is the biggest problem with Parler.

> Free speech doesn't apply to non-government resources.

Where did the parent comment mention the government? They referenced the concept of free speech. That is not the same thing as the first amendment which is what you are referring to.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#360

Post by 6sup6 »

shrimpx wrote: post #301
JuliusPullo wrote: post #82

Giant corporations and the media, who used to encourage BLM and Antifa riots, are now openly using their power to humiliate and destroy their business competitors and political opposition. But who cares. Let's see what's new in Netflix.

The black cause is on a completely different moral plane than angry white people trying to keep trump in power. To cut off service to someone is not destroying a business “competitor.” The fact that they were depending on your service indicates a type of cooperation not competition.

According to your moral values. But your morals aren't shared by the entire world.
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