Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support • Hacker News Board

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#661

Post by crispyambulance » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:49 PM UTC

namedpipe wrote: post #524

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…

The best mitigation strategy here is to engage your vendors with private contracts instead of depending on generic terms of service (ToS) alone. Every company I've worked with has negotiated separate agreements with providers to reduce risk. Including contracts with both AWS and Azure. If your business gets to a certain size and you are still on the generic ToS and paying by credit card you have a big risk on your ha…

> You could be terminated at any point.

You could be "terminated at any point" regardless of what the contract says if something as bizarre as what happened last week occurs and your platform was an integral part of it. Contracts only go so far. Not everything in human affairs runs like clockwork, contracts are broken all the time.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#662

Post by burrows » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:50 PM UTC

yongjik wrote: post #542

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…

> The bar for getting "canceled" is already moving up ... Eh I'm not so sure about that? I mean, "Did your userbase activately participate in a plot to storm the Capitol and potentially take lawmakers and the VP of the State as hostages (or worse)?" is an awfully high bar to clear.

And if my hypothetical platform is decentralized to the extent that I can’t top-down censor content, what then?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#663

Post by r00fus » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:52 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?

Twitter has a program. At that point, it's about the upstream provider having some CYA on process and Twitter's ability to follow through.

Parler's response was a casual finger back to Amazon, and the response was a swift boot.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#664

Post by mcguire » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

drieddust wrote: post #565

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…

These companies are sucking up to their new democratic overloads so make sure you do not anger them. Taliban have a twitter account, Ex PM of Malasia have openly justified Paris beheading, Iran's supremo calls for Jew genocide, and last but not the least China calls their Uighur detention camps as "reeducation" with zero consequences. So yes plan if you want but cost of executing the plan might be high enough to put…

"Taliban have a twitter account"

President Trump came to an agreement with the Taliban, so somebody seems to think they're legitimate. (https://www.reuters.com/article/afghanistan-taliban-usa-int/...)

"Ex PM of Malasia have openly justified Paris beheading"

Which comment Twitter removed. (https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/a-bigot-without-principl...)

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#665

Post by MartinCron » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #424

MartinCron wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't really "mute" a murderous mob that shows up at the capitol. This isn't about seeing stuff you don't like, this is about a platform being used to directly incite political violence.

TBH physical security of vital structures like Capitol should not rely on someone's ability to moderate some platform. There are many other possible attackers who won't be coordinating themselves on social networks in the open. Capitol et al. should have robust enough security to keep most threats out, because some threats just won't be easily predictable in advance.

Regardless of how well the Capitol is guarded, inciting violence is still a crime.

If I orchestrate a criminal conspiracy to rob Fort Knox, it is still a criminal conspiracy when it eventually fails.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#666

Post by _5yoy » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

celdon25 wrote: post #636

bird_monster wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Businesses that are not terror cells have nothing to worry about. Companies have always pulled away from extremist groups. You wouldn't expect Microsoft to accept a contra…

> Businesses that are not terror cells have nothing to worry about. What is your definition of a terror cell? Do Amazon, Microsoft, and Google qualify as terror cells for competing for billion dollar contracts with the DoD? This is an absurd benchmark with no basis in reality. https://cnbc.com/2019/10/25/microsoft-wins-major-defense-clo...

It's really not, and has never been. A group of people literally organized on Facebook and brought guns to overtake the capitol. It's pretty cut and dry. Again, nobody would've expected Microsoft to support ISIS' tech. Businesses have always pulled away from extremist groups like this, as is their right to do.

The "whataboutism" on DoD contracts isn't relevant. If your stance is "Our own government is a terror cell", well obviously then our entire society is gone anyway, so why even bother discussing the ethics of tech in america at all? But obviously this stance is just hyperbole in an attempt to dismiss the validity of claiming the rioters as legitimate terrorists.

And even by your own example, when has the DoD ever stormed the capitol? Or attempted to overthrow the US government? Spoiler: they haven't. And these insanely silly attempts at implying that legitimate businesses are under the same category as fascist extremists is a joke. This tech precedent pearl clutching is such an insanely bad look it's difficult to even fathom. My assertion is simple: when you try to overthrow a country's government, companies in that country don't want to work with you. The waters are muddier with respect to overthrowing other people's governments, but the DoD has never once attempted to overthrow the US government. There has never been an AWS-supported US coup (before last week). SO the "whatabouts" aren't even relevant.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#667

Post by ogre_codes » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:53 PM UTC

bawolff wrote: post #648

ogre_codes wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

You can mitigate anything (i dont think you should, but that is a different question). I dont think the original poster was suggesting that type of thing (more a fear of slippery slope), but for the sake of argument, if they were tor hidden services would be the obvious way to mitigate.

> You can mitigate anything

My point is what this guy seems to want to enable is fundamentally conspiring to commit crimes.

He seems to talk around that, but that's where we are.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#668

Post by imperio59 » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:54 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…

Bullying is real.

My wife and I run a side Business Saas product. She is listed as COO on her social media profile for the company.

She is also in a bunch of groups about gardening in our local area.

During the height of BLM protests and CHOP/CHAZ, someone made a post that was very off-topic for the group, basically saying we should all support what was happening in the CHOP and all the violence against cops was justified due to racial injustice.

My wife took no position on the issue but politely replied saying the post felt off-topic and she didn't want to hear about politics in her favorite gardening group.

Several people attacked her on the post, calling her white privileged, racist, etc... all for suggesting the post was off-topic (even though the group's own rules prohibited political content).

One person took it a step further and went on her profile to see where she worked. They then messaged our company's social media profile to tell our company that my wife was a racist, and she should be fired or reprimanded because she had made racist comments in a FB group (she had not, and the person provided no screenshots/proof either).

Unfortunately for that person, they did not realize they were talking to my wife's husband (me) who promptly banned them from our page and blocked their profile from my/my wife's profiles so they could no longer bother us.

However, this type of new "online activism" is rampant nowadays. Small companies often have little choice but to comply or be publicly shamed/bullied, including doxxing or going after individual employees, as in our story.

I disapprove of this type of behavior. This is mob justice in a different form. It is the court of public opinion rather than an actual court of law where someone would get a chance to defend themselves. It is wrong and our society needs to grow up past this childish phase it's going through where every angry person riled up by this or that party's rhetoric feels like they have the right to attempt to destroy another person's livelihood for the sake of pushing "their truth" or "justice". That's not what Justice is.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#669

Post by m1sta_ » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:55 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'm not sure there is a real risk. Slippery slope falacy is easy to reach for here.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#670

Post by disantlor » Mon, Jan 11, 2021, 8:58 PM UTC

aftbit wrote: post #656

munificent wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

>> free speech > First Amendment These things are different. First Amendment protections restrict the US government from censoring protected speech. Free speech is a broader concept that covers any restrictions upon speech, including restrictions that are legal in the US. It seems that the right to free speech must be balanced against the harms that speech can cause, but I am tired of this meme that just because they…

are you not just highlighting the fact that there is a First Amendment right but not a broader "free speech" right, which is the very point people are trying to make.