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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

#611

Post by turing_complete »

StellarTabi wrote: post #529
enriquec wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or the fact that nicolas maduro - a man already convicted of crimes against humanity by the UN - still has an account and has gone uncensored. how anyone here defends such blatant hypocrisy is beyond me

I don't think "convicted of crimes against humanity by the UN" violates Twitter's ToS, and I'm assuming he didn't use Twitter to commit any of the alleged crimes, so this is a pretty bad faith, whataboutism, complete non-sense, etc.. By this logic you could ban both Bush and Obama, too.

How ignorant or evil must someone be to think Bush and Obama are like Nicolás Maduro?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#612

Post by analog31 »

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…

Every week there's a front page story on HN to the tune of "X froze my account and won't tell me why, and their appeal process is totally opaque."

I think that to some extent, the availability of multiple providers, and the risk of getting kicked out, are the long term remedy. People will figure out how to mitigate sole-source risks. There might be a risk-reward tradeoff, i.e., the most desirable platforms from a short term profit standpoint might carry the biggest risk of getting shutdown. There will always be somebody who will let you in, at some level of service and security.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#613

Post by mcguire »

jlkuester7 wrote: post #540
yks wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think things are pretty clear cut, if you want to start a service to obviously harbor fascist user-driven content, then yes, prepare to be cut off from the mainstream vendors. DailyStormer and Parler are explicitly those types of services. It is a bit disingenuous to suggest that because Parler is down, "mom and pop" websites with comment section attached now need to lawyer up.

> It is a bit disingenuous to suggest that because Parler is down, "mom and pop" websites with comment section attached now need to lawyer up. This is definitely a straw-man, but at the same time, if your website hosts user-supplied content and you don't have a rock-solid strategy for moderating it, then yeah you probably should be worried. (Though the spammers will probably take down your site long before AWS...)

"a rock-solid strategy for moderating it"

You mean, like Facebook and Twitter?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#614

Post by nautilus12 »

mcguire wrote: post #591
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…

Here are the AWS Service Terms ( https://aws.amazon.com/service-terms/ ) and the AWS Acceptable Use Policy ( https://aws.amazon.com/aup/ ). You are responsible for understanding and following these as well as the appropriate laws (which probably require the assistance of a lawyer, which I am not, and which is probably a good idea in any case). If a service provider refuses you service and you believe it violates the…

The problem is that someone (Parler in this case) would have to actively build automated moderation systems or be philosophically aligned with moderation in order to fulfill the TOS in this case since its the users driving the violation. The baseline shouldn't require them build something, that seems like a burden too far. Suppose the violators were bots, doesn't this mean that anyone that can't build a moderation system to keep up with the bots becomes collateral damage?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#615

Post by shadowgovt »

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…

Probably to mitigate the way one mitigates against other disasters, such as natural disasters or political upheaval in a nation: have an exit plan to a partitioned cloud environment.

Since we're talking political consequences, the partitioning here would be political. Whatever nation owns the companies you do business with, find counterpart companies in nations on poor terms with those host nations and have a plan in place to ramp up infrastructure in those nations quickly (or keep it on "hot standby").

There is the risk that data migration could violate laws in the originating nation, if you're exfiltrating data that the host nation's laws don't allow to be exfiltrated.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#616

Post by kats »

cs-szazz wrote: post #378
readams wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can ask the question of whether you think in general that marginalized voices should be allowed to exist. Obviously, you don't like these particular people (and neither do I) so you don't see any problem with eradicating their voice. If Amazon were just one provider and there were other options it might even then still be OK. But it's not just a choice of Amazon. Any provider hosting them will be subject to the c…

Yeah it's certainly a slippery slope, 100% agree. In your example it's probably slightly different because religion is a protected class, while political leanings aren't. I think what's particularly interesting is you substitute "right wing" with "Jews" like you did, and you start to wonder if Amazon crossed the line. But then change "Jew" to "terrorist", and you think Amazon might be in the right. Clearly we can't p…

Just pointing out that Parler was the #1 most downloaded app on the Android app store for some amount of time. (Around the #1 or #2 spot for a couple months? At least a few weeks.)

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#617

Post by sildur »

ekianjo wrote: post #510
cactus2093 wrote: post #399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What are the best mitigations here, both technical and social? Vocally side with the popular issues, or try to stay completely out of them, to try to avoid becoming a target (e.g., social media presence)? For now, don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic election and install an illegitimate government. Seems like a pretty easy thing to stay clear of. I get the concern you're expressing, but not everything is a s…

> don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic election and install an illegitimate government. Erm, was Parler as a platform even doing that? Or you know, PEOPLE on the platform, which is not the exact same thing?

At some point it is the same thing. By act or omission.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#618

Post by b0bb1z3r0 »

Closi wrote: post #396
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…

100% agree - but I think this can only be solved via legislation. Amazon has too much market power if it can shut down another company at the push of a button for something that isn't illegal (even if it's distasteful).

It is illegal to conspire to commit violence against the US

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#619

Post by nautilus12 »

Johnny555 wrote: post #413
Closi wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree - but I think this can only be solved via legislation. Amazon has too much market power if it can shut down another company at the push of a button for something that isn't illegal (even if it's distasteful).

Was the parler content legal? "Amazon Web Services suspended Parler from its web hosting services... citing a letter it had obtained that mentions 98 examples of Parler posts that "encourage and incite violence." Don't forget that Amazon also has legal liability for hosting and distributing illegal content. Amazon is not a monopoly -- the mitigation for AWS being able to cut off your business is to architect your app…

But is that Parler breaking the law or its users??

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#620

Post by ogre_codes »

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…

> What are the best mitigations here

What are you trying to mitigate?

You can't mitigate "Getting banned for making a place to plan a coup". You can't mitigate "I want a place to allow posts advocating criminal activity".

If people were openly discussing breaking and entering houses, should that be allowed too?

Why should we tolerate publicly planning violence when we don't tolerate publicly planning other crimes?

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