Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support • Hacker News Board

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#621

Post by JKCalhoun » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:33 PM UTC

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…

At the risk of sounding snide, it appears that if your business plan is to attract the type of users that foment hate and violence ... you are in a risky business.

Anything other than that at this point is a slippery slope fallacy.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#622

Post by _fnhr » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

baron_harkonnen wrote: post #435

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…

> the left trying to shut down free speech People really have no idea what the "left" even is anymore do they? I was once down voted here for mentioning that the NYTimes is not an extreme left wing publication. The NYTimes is a centrist liberal publication that is widely reviled by anyone on the left. It's amazing to me that the media (not just Fox-news and co) has constructed this bizarre bogey-man of the left as so…

At least in the mainstream right wingers are the left wingers of yesterday. Two good examples are how free-speech and free-markets are considered right wing today.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#623

Post by danans » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

jlkuester7 wrote: post #469

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…

> not everything is a slippery slope From a risk management perspective, this does not seem like a safe assumption to make. The DailyStormer got "canceled" by vendors for not even trying to moderate content that actively promoted violence (among other horrible things). Now Parlor gets "canceled" by vendors for not doing a good enough job trying to moderate content promoting violence. The bar for getting "canceled" is…

> The DailyStormer got "canceled" by vendors for not even trying to moderate content that actively promoted violence (among other horrible things). Now Parlor gets "canceled" by vendors for not doing a good enough job trying to moderate content promoting violence.

There is no daylight between the the Daily Stormer and Parler with respect to their willingness to distribute content that promotes far right violence. They also share that same objective as their founding motivation.

Just different branding.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#624

Post by nautilus12 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

Here is what I dont understand, is Parler violating Amazon's TOS or its users? Suppose that some of the users are bots, doesn't that mean that in order to fulfill amazon's TOS Parler would have to actively build something (moderation systems) to keep up with the bots? Doesn't this make any service that can't do this collateral damage? What if people built bot systems good enough to sidestep twitter (speaking in code for example, using a cypher) and levelled them at twitter, etc. would the same thing happen?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#625

Post by weaksauce » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:36 PM UTC

Daishiman wrote: post #500

jlkuester7 wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> not everything is a slippery slope From a risk management perspective, this does not seem like a safe assumption to make. The DailyStormer got "canceled" by vendors for not even trying to moderate content that actively promoted violence (among other horrible things). Now Parlor gets "canceled" by vendors for not doing a good enough job trying to moderate content promoting violence. The bar for getting "canceled" is…

No, parlor wasn't even doing a "good enough job". It wasn't doing _anything_. It's financial backers supported everything with regards to its users going into a violent frenzy. There really is nothing contentious here, unless you feel that if you know that a group is organizing in your platform with the intent of staging a coup then you're in your right to just let them go about it.

To extend on that... the entire premise of parler was that everyone was censoring them too much(for similar calls for violence) so they needed a platform that was immune from that. well when your entire premise is flawed from the start it's not a stretch to see that they would be targeted from that like stormfront.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#626

Post by travisoneill1 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:36 PM UTC

gameman144 wrote: post #592

randyrand wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consider this - If the conservative farmers and distributers individually decided not serve the bay area anyone, they are well within their rights. Political ideology is not protected, regardless of how important you perceive basic accommodations like shelter, food, or communication are.

Now consider the scenario where all the large agriculture firms and distributors cut off the Bay Area. Sure, the Bay Area could start their own farms to meet that need, but I could hardly imagine the whole population living there saying "This is fine, they're well within their rights." This feels to me like a situation of "fine for anyone to do, problematic for everyone to do". With political ideology not a protected…

At the time the constitution was written "everyone" in any given industry was thousands of small businesses each of which was only subject to the public pressure of the people in the town in which they were based. So it was literally unthinkable that a whole industry could deny service to one person. I bet if the founders had envisioned an entity as powerful as Amazon, they would have written in constraints for private entities too.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#627

Post by Cabal » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

satysin wrote: post #264

This needs to happen. Parler is not a "social network" in the same way Twitter, Facebook or Reddit are. It is a radicalisation platform hiding behind a Silicon Valley style startup veneer. I signed up for Parler 6 weeks ago and what I have seen from the platform is frightening. It isn't dumb memes and gifs but hardcore alt-right propaganda and conspiracy theories. Within hours of commenting on posts I was contacted a…

I've been a Parler user for multiple months and have never seen any of the activity like the above poster is claiming. While I occasionally read the far-right stuff for fun (and the far-left stuff on Twitter), my interests are mostly in tech. Never once has someone tried to "recruit" me for any of the above.

I can only assume this nonsense is trolling/preaching to the choir, etc.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#628

Post by sildur » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #608

pixl97 wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turns out you should keep those attempting to over throw democratic elections off your service.

Ouch, that's going to hurt. USA government is a pretty big customer. Or do we not care about democratic elections in Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, Egypt, etc.?

No, we don't. I thought trying not to shit in the same place you eat was common sense, yet here we are...

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#629

Post by nodamage » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:38 PM UTC

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…

I am not sure why people are treating this like it's new? There is already a massive list of things you can't do on AWS, for example running a spam operation, pirated software trading site, drug trading site, etc. Is it really so surprising that this list also includes running a site where violent attacks are planned?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#630

Post by bob1029 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:38 PM UTC

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…

Best mitigation is to involve as few 3rd parties as possible. Find more obscure allies in the space who are not motivated (controlled) by public perception and political gains. Consider building your own tools and technologies to replace 3rd parties.

For instance, the load balancing and DDOS protection products sold by Cloudflare are not the effects of some ancient mystical artifact that we could never hope to emulate. These are simple network engineering practices that can be replicated by any experienced IT staff. Sure, you might not be able to mitigate a theoretical 100+ terabit DDOS attack, but is this actually a problem in practice for your business? Even if you have ridiculous capacity, at a certain point you would still have to defer to ISPs, law enforcement and other external measures in order to restore sane operations.

Certainly, there is no perfect solution. But, the more of your stack you have under your exclusive physical control the better.