71–80 of 143 posts
> please participate so that we can get a good picture of what people here think. why would you expect an honest answer to this poll?
Because your vote is just as anonymous as your upvote history, which is quite a bit more private than your comment history.
[1] Assuming there are no intelligence agencies peaking at the traffic and login it on real time.
I find the particularly libertarian mindset of the hackernews audience really fascinating here. If a group of neo nazis were organizing an attack on people in a hotel room, wouldn’t the hotel be allowed to kick them out? Or the same situation with a landlord and their tenants? People keep bringing up ideology. This isn’t really about ideology, this is about violence. Parler was being used to organize violence.
So are Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, Telegram, ...
IMO criminal behavior on social platforms should be investigated and prosecuted by the police and FBI etc. The same would presumably happen in your hotel analogy. Shutting them down doesn’t help with that.
In addition, social platforms of a certain size IMO should be treated more like a public infrastructure, because that’s what they effectively serve as. That’s a complex topic though.
The problem is, what happens to the next platform, if they don't like something. Our company's board had a meeting today to discuss cloud, and vendor lockin (or translation... holy eff, this could happen to anyone, let's pump the brakes on this cloud stuff). What happens if for some reason an employee, customer, or some other event caused a similar scenario. Twitter has had plenty of content filled with threats of violence in other instances, and much more direct, targeted, and deliberate. They are still running.
I personally don't have an answer, and it didn't matter why the plug was pulled, but what it did was cause a pause, and a rethink on where the control resides. Needless to say, our cloud strategy changed this morning, and I wonder how many other businesses had a similar conversation this morning.
yes, with caveats. my opinion on these kinds of topics is always the same. do I object that amazon, apple, and google have kicked hateful content off of their own properties? no. do I object that getting blacklisted by a few large tech companies is effectively getting kicked off the entire internet? very much yes.
One other: there is a caveat of “given that the system works the way it does right now,” where there is sort of a wild-west approach to these types of big communities, then yeah Google is the sheriff of Play Store and Apple is the sheriff of App Store and Amazon is the sheriff of AWS and they set their rules about how much trouble they want on their streets. But if the overall system were fundamentally different[1], then I would not be so sure; there might be some sort of “due process” expectations then which do not exist for me now.
[1] As it may well have to become—those cities were effectively governed that way given population sizes of, what, 10,000 or so? If you have 100 million users and 0.01% of your users can code apps, you have easily that many app developers you have to wrangle.
forcing voters to shut up in a time of increasing polarisation will always get you more polarisation, or worse.
Unreservedly yes: a) Parler is hardly being “kicked off the entire internet.” They are being severely ostracized and being denied service by major online companies. This would happen to me in my city’s various bars if I developed a reputation as a violent drunk - it is not a violation of any fundamental liberties. Regardless, the idea that Parler can’t exist without AWS is ridiculous - what is true is that maybe you…
They are all private companies. They are free to choose who to do business with. If Parler broke the ToS, then there's even more reason for Amazon/Apple/Google to cut ties.
I can’t be the only one here actually concerned about Big Tech being the ultimate arbiter of truth and information. AWS is effectively public infrastructure at this point and must be treated as such unless you want to careen into a corporate dystopia where the only information you receive is information Big Tech finds acceptable.
It's a private company. If they were unable to host their own servers, and no ISP would give them an IP address then that is a problem as long as they're following the law.
Maybe if this happened a little more often less companies would go all in on Cloud services.
Unreservedly yes: a) Parler is hardly being “kicked off the entire internet.” They are being severely ostracized and being denied service by major online companies. This would happen to me in my city’s various bars if I developed a reputation as a violent drunk - it is not a violation of any fundamental liberties. Regardless, the idea that Parler can’t exist without AWS is ridiculous - what is true is that maybe you…
> In general people should be aware of the risks of offsourcing to the cloud... especially when your business model is odious and immoral. I could imagine a future where religion makes a massive resurgence and homosexuality is deemed "odious and immoral". So then Grindr and friends should all be able to be kicked off of their cloud hosting and forced to self-host... right?
This false equivalence is bullshit and you are perfectly aware that it’s bullshit.