Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support • Hacker News Board

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#481

Post by blitz_skull » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

throwaway5752 wrote: post #471

chmod600 wrote: post #425

This is a weird case of private companies getting together and voluntarily enforcing the supremecy of the state. I'm sure it's happened before, but probably not in situations we'd like to emulate. Insurrection is bad, but the possibility of insurrection is good. When any possibility of insurrection is crushed, for everyone now and in the future (not just insurrectionists), that sounds like it won't end well for the p…

It is hard to separate the fact that they are distancing themselves from a fascist, white-supremacist platform that was instrumental in a near-overthrow of the US government. And even if you think that's okay, this wasn't insurrection in response to oppression, it was an insurrection to overthrow an uncontested democratic result. I guess Parler is so radioactive that Amazon would rather be sued than continue to busin…

"near-overthrow"

A few hundred people stalled the counting of electoral votes for literally a few HOURS. Hardly a "near-overthrow" of anything other than Trump himself.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#482

Post by epistasis » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

unholiness wrote: post #452

epistasis wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these companies are "shutting you down" for your speech, it's the same sort of speech that would have gotten you shut down in the public square. Have they shut down text messaging, phone calls, group messaging, all the encrypted messaging apps? Do the tech companies control postal mail, letters to the editor, and printing presses? Of course not. You are looking for others to give you a platform to reach a wide aud…

> Normal, political speech is just fine. Incitement to violence, no Right. Even the Post Office is not required to deliver pipe bombs. The issue is that right now, that's not the standard. Amazon /hasn't/ taken down sites in the name of political censorship, but it /could/. The implications of that are important, and they're why I find it hard to be satisfied with justifications like "Amazon is a private company, the…

Right now, the US military could side with Trump, launch a fascist coup, start rounding up enemy politicians for assassination, and eliminate any freedom at all for anybody who doesn't who enough MAGA support publicly. They haven't, but they could, and it's happened frequently enough in other countries.

Not only is this scenario 1000x worse for freedom than the very very worst that Amazon could do, it's also far more likely at the moment.

So my question is, why the F are we even talking about Amazon? Because it's just a BS distraction from the elephant in the room.

It's time to stop engaging with sophistry and fight back the fascists that are trying to take away all our freedoms. And this big fear of big tech is exactly the type of distraction that lets fascism flourish enough to gain a stronghold.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#483

Post by hire_charts » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

readams wrote: post #383

tylerhou wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Picture instead private businesses who all refuse to do business with Jews. This is a false equivalency. Race, religion, etc. are protected classes. It's impossible for people to change their race, and our society has agreed that we shouldn't force people to change their religion. Political beliefs are not protected classes. When your political beliefs include inciting violence by spreading unfounded conspiracy the…

Protected classes were defined in the law only because we decided they should be. Nothing says it can't include more or fewer things as the winds of opinion blow in a different direction. A religion isn't really much different from other belief systems after all. This is a common error in reasoning by the way: looking to the way current law happens to be and inferring from that what the right thing to do is. For exam…

Amazon is not banning Republicans. Amazon is dropping a risky client after having more than reasonable doubts about that client's ability to operate in good faith. Republican views are not being censored. The fact that this site happens to cater to a lot of "Republicans" who feel marginalized by public discourse is merely a very telling correlation between a political view and a tendency towards violent tendencies and conspiratorial beliefs.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#484

Post by eclipxe » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

blitz_skull wrote: post #481

throwaway5752 wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is hard to separate the fact that they are distancing themselves from a fascist, white-supremacist platform that was instrumental in a near-overthrow of the US government. And even if you think that's okay, this wasn't insurrection in response to oppression, it was an insurrection to overthrow an uncontested democratic result. I guess Parler is so radioactive that Amazon would rather be sued than continue to busin…

"near-overthrow" A few hundred people stalled the counting of electoral votes for literally a few HOURS. Hardly a "near-overthrow" of anything other than Trump himself.

That's only because house and senate members were successfully evacuated - if they weren't, what exactly did you think the rioters were going to do? What do you think they had zip ties for? What was the gallows erected outside for?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#485

Post by Server6 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #422

sterlind wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Link to the Buzzfeed article: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p... Apparently Amazon sent them 98 examples of posts directly inciting violence, Parler replied with a proposal to manually moderate such posts with volunteers, and most of the posts Amazon gave as examples were still up (including some urging for systematic assassination or blowing up AWS data centers.)

If I could find 98 examples of users calling for violence on Twitter would you advocate for Twitter being de-platformed? Why or why not?

If Twitter wasn't willing to at least attempt to moderate then yes. What's going on here isn't new. Web hosting services have been dropping hate speech platforms and forums since the internet began.

The real problem is that is seems like the hate speech/Qanon wing of the right side of the political spectrum has the loudest voice and it's ruining it for actual conservatives.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#486

Post by staunch » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

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…

Every private company in the U.S. is compelled by law to offer goods and services regardless of race, religion, etc.

Adding political affiliation to the list of protected classes probably makes sense. It seems odd that it's not on the list, doesn't it?

The bans we're seeing here are very clearly political. Parler is not breaking laws. It seems obvious that if Parler was being used by BLM to organize violent riots they would not get banned.

As usual, one person's terrorist is another's freedom fighter. Anyone simplifying this whole thing into good vs bad is behaving like a member of a tribal mob.

One thing that is certain is that private companies should not be the ones deciding these major cultural issues. The Supreme Court should resolve these issues.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#487

Post by bcrosby95 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #425

This is a weird case of private companies getting together and voluntarily enforcing the supremecy of the state. I'm sure it's happened before, but probably not in situations we'd like to emulate. Insurrection is bad, but the possibility of insurrection is good. When any possibility of insurrection is crushed, for everyone now and in the future (not just insurrectionists), that sounds like it won't end well for the p…

> private companies getting together and voluntarily enforcing the supremecy of the state

Your choice of words implies some sort of conspiracy here. The response has been widespread and quite frankly should be unsurprising. No coordination is necessary. Any sane CEO running a profit driven organization will not tolerate a group of people whose words of violence against the state cross beyond hyperbole and words and into actual action. If more actions take place and are more successful and these companies decided to stick their heads in the sand then the existence of these companies would be under threat.

This is about basic survival.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#488

Post by yongjik » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #425

This is a weird case of private companies getting together and voluntarily enforcing the supremecy of the state. I'm sure it's happened before, but probably not in situations we'd like to emulate. Insurrection is bad, but the possibility of insurrection is good. When any possibility of insurrection is crushed, for everyone now and in the future (not just insurrectionists), that sounds like it won't end well for the p…

It's amusing that people are simultaneously complaining that tech companies are censoring the president of the US and "enforcing the supremacy of the state" at the same time.

True "deep state" conspiracy material. After four years of running the country, they are still underdogs.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#489

Post by jlkuester7 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:32 PM UTC

gnicholas wrote: post #420

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…

It appears there is a business opportunity to (re)create infrastructure for use by companies/individuals that have been banned from the mainstream platforms. I'm sure such a platform would be despised by many in the mainstream, and most mainstream companies would not consider using them because customers would boycott them if they did. But for companies whose customers are primarily on the right, the cost/benefit cou…

The two big issues that come to mind with this are DNS and SSL certs. AFIK both are really hard spaces to become a "provider", so you end up being reliant on the existing providers to do business with you. Sure there are decentralized solutions to these problems, but none of them really let you operate in the "normal" internet space...

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#490

Post by grahamburger » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #425

This is a weird case of private companies getting together and voluntarily enforcing the supremecy of the state. I'm sure it's happened before, but probably not in situations we'd like to emulate. Insurrection is bad, but the possibility of insurrection is good. When any possibility of insurrection is crushed, for everyone now and in the future (not just insurrectionists), that sounds like it won't end well for the p…

> This is a weird case of private companies getting together and voluntarily enforcing the supremecy of the state.

It's maybe weirder than that, because of the involvement of the president. Even if you believe the president was entirely uninvolved and unaware, the purpose of the insurrection was to keep a leader in power, not remove one. The actions of tech companies are both a challenge to the supremacy of the (current administration of the) state and a way of enforcing the supremacy of the state.