121–130 of 143 posts
Parler has a first-amendment right to free speech. Amazon, etc., also have a first-amendment right to free speech. IMHO this includes deciding not to conduct business with another private party. I do not consider this on their part to be "censorship," at least not moreso than any restriction on their decision to do this. The underlying issue is that services provided by private companies have effectively become essen…
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…
Here's how I read the poll: If I were a datacenter owner, and I leased out a serious portion of my datacenter as a public cloud, would I have terms of service? Yes; I don't want to attract trouble or criminality. Would those terms of service ban abuse, like cryptocurrency miners on free trial accounts? Yes; I can't afford to run a datacenter at a loss for long periods of time. Would those terms of service ban planning or executing crimes? Yes; I can't afford to give service to criminals, as they drive off customers who are less likely to violate other terms of service.
It's that simple. There's no additional caveats. If I saw the sort of evidence that AWS, Apple, and Google have been shown, then I would have cut off Parler as well.
While it's not a caveat, I would certainly enjoy a regulatory approach to moderating the immense power that comes with owning many datacenters. However, given the "free speech" angle, I think that Parler users and owners should suck it up and save up their pennies and dimes for on-premise deployments. If you want to host fascists, then you shouldn't be surprised when the rest of society has an allergic reaction and forces you to go fund yourself.
Unreservedly yes. The Capitol riots killed 6 people, including two police officers. The crowd was armed to the teeth with guns, pipebombs, and ziptie handcuffs. They constructed a gallows. They coordinated with police sympathizers to gain access to the building, while one GOP congresswoman live-tweeted the known whereabouts of Nancy Pelosi. They were planning to murder political opposition and violently overthrow a f…
Reddit has been implicated in murdering an innocent thinking they were the Boston Bomber. Should Reddit be unreservedly banned?
Suicides and murders have been live-streamed on Facebook. Should Facebook be unreservedly banned?
Each of those platforms host countless instances of violence, are platforms on which abuse of all kinds can grow and thrive - should they all be unreservedly banned?
Sure, some of Parler’s users were violent in the protests. A vanishingly small minority of their user base, at that. But to single out Parler and not any of the other platforms is no different than singling out a political viewpoint that you find disagreeable, and for all that you wax poetic about neo-fascism, nothing is more fascist than saying that a viewpoint you don’t like shouldn’t be allowed to exist.
The reason for dropping them should be noted with some kind of auditable trail. If they are dropping them because of illegal activity being sanctioned on the service, that should be part of the record, maybe even along with evidence of their unwillingness to address the problem. All of those things point to a client willing to abuse the service, thus justifying Amazon/Apple/Google cutting them off. If however, the auditable trail shows that the service was making attempts to address the issue, that gives them some leeway. All of this is under the false assumption that there is some unforeseen perfectly objective arbiter of disputes like this.
No. If Parler was deemed illegal (eg: it was ruled by law that it's facilitating terrorism), then YES. If they are violating Amazon Terms of Service / Apple's Terms of Service, then YES (TOS is a bit of a grey area, but assuming that things are clear enough, those should be enforced). One can argue about a monopolic market position, at which case it's the role of the Government to solve the issue and regulate (in a t…
I think it's bad for the companies that did this, so I don't agree they made the right decision.
But hurting these companies is a good thing, so I'm glad they did it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Parler can still buy some servers and host a website and use mobile web. Does renting Linode VMs or Digital Ocean droplets count? Because they can cut Parler off just as easily as Amazon. Do they literally have to buy physical servers and host them on their own property somewhere? But then how do they get connected to the internet without going through some privately owned ISP that might cut them off? How do they r…
Where there's a will, there's a way. I don't believe everyone is guaranteed easy IT as a basic human right. Buy some servers. Or just setup a proxy so no one knows where the actual servers are and when one isp shuts you down you can move as fast as dns can update. Then, of course, the domain name company may come after you. But you can also use a direct ip address. I don't think domain names are a basic human right e…
And then the RIR cuts off your AS.
Or your SSL issuer revokes your cert.
They can't win on the conventional Internet, even by playing a shell-game. So these 'deplatformed' services will move to store-and-forward mesh networking using opportunistic connectivity over ad hoc WiFi or Bluetooth or whatever. And that's going to be nearly impossible to monitor and police. How will we know what they're discussing if we don't even know that they're communicating?
The more you tighten your grip...
I believe companies should have a right to have a terms of service and to act on those terms of service. They do it every day. Parler can still buy some servers and host a website and use mobile web. If Google took the step to block them with Chrome then I think I would have issue with that.
> Parler can still buy some servers and host a website and use mobile web. Does renting Linode VMs or Digital Ocean droplets count? Because they can cut Parler off just as easily as Amazon. Do they literally have to buy physical servers and host them on their own property somewhere? But then how do they get connected to the internet without going through some privately owned ISP that might cut them off? How do they r…
That's exactly what companies did not too long ago for this very reason. They wanted full control over the entire stack and yes had physical servers in physical offices.
Over time, folks laid off their IT staff and traded away their control for convenience. That's the tradeoff: their house -> their rules, your house -> your rules.
> But then how do they get connected to the internet without going through some privately owned ISP that might cut them off?
Now that is an insurmountable obstacle and a real problem. For that matter, what if Comcast cut off all of AWS until they banned Parler? It would take years to build a physical cable network. The highways are much more important than the parking lots.
No, with caveats. Apple and Google, fine. That’s distribution. They have a lot of distribution power, but that’s an antitrust question. AWS pulling the plug is infrastructure being yanked, and that’s more concerning. It takes Parler off the web. That’s closer to silencing than removing an amplifier. Nobody should be forced to provide services to the likes of Parler. But cutting them off with hours’ notice is excessiv…
AWS can cut off service for copyright complaints. The company I work for gets complaints these all the time and our service time to remove the data/images is pretty small. If the activity is illegal, AWS can cut off service.