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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

#721

Post by roenxi »

cactus2093 wrote: post #399
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, 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…

It sounds very reasonable up until attempting to identify what, objectively, is the bar to set business policy. Twitter literally claims that "To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th." was the straw that broke the camels back [0]. That isn't an objective bar.

Context which "everyone knows" is a political question - a highly political question. If AWS happens to have a similar standard to Twitter then the only way for a business to figure out if it is in breach is by experiment, and AWS just showed it can pull the plug in days with apparently no warning.

[0] https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspensio...

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#722

Post by eloff »

Tepix wrote: post #692
Closi wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 don't think it is though - the point is who decides if the democratic election was fair? What happens in a foreign country if their government decides the election isn't fair? Should people be silenced? Or is it Amazon's job now to work out if worldwide elections a…

> the point is who decides if the democratic election was fair? That one is easy: it was approximately 60 different courts of law that laughed the "evidence" of fraud out of the room

It's not that easy. If we're talking about an election in Venezuela, the courts would also laugh accusations of election rigging out of the room.

To be clear, I fully side with the U.S. courts here. What I'm saying though is governments and officials lie, you can't always just trust the official story.

If parler were used for inciting civil disorder in Venezuela over the election result and the government comes to AWS and says shut them down, what do they do?

Now suddenly they're the arbitrators of what is true in the world.

I don't want to get too hypothetical here, because I think this time it was pretty black and white.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#723

Post by hitpointdrew »

cactus2093 wrote: post #399
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, 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…

>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.

Parler didn't do this, it's users did. Vastly different things.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#724

Post by gorgoiler »

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…

Amazon taking down Parler is some dirty business. The fact that we might be ok with that, pragmatically, doesn’t detract from it being, at best, a morally dubious action.

In a state that protects speech, one shouldn’t stand by when default-web-megacorp does the censorship dirty work on our behalf.

Or maybe we do. If this is a once in a generation aberration then it can slide. Time will tell.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#725

Post by jhowell »

imperio59 wrote: post #668
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 just…

> 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).

Isn't the ability to decide what issue your bring to a space and then deciding which issues you'll "take no position" a privilege?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#726

Post by kenjackson »

imperio59 wrote: post #668
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 just…

Bullying from internet trolls is real and spans political boundaries. It goes into even things like sports fandom and video game culture. This is a fundamentally different issue than what we're seeing with Parler.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#727

Post by obviouslynotme »

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…

If AWS is dropping you, then Facebook, Twitter, and Google probably already have. Stripe, Cloudflare, and Paypal are probably doing the same. If you try to continue, Visa, MasterCard, and your ISP will shut you down next. This is the world we live in now. You can be removed from commerce by a unanimous decision that you will be told never happened. I am just glad I can shut people down hard now when they say, "If you don't like X, then build your own X." I have now watched two Twitter clones and one Patreon clone be shutdown by magical sudden decisions made in lockstep. My guess is that BitChute is next.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#728

Post by ogre_codes »

tmpz22 wrote: post #509
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…

Its called voting. That's how you change who's in power, you vote. We have democracy so you don't have to have an insurrection to change power.

But what if you want to change who's in power but you don't have a majority?

That's the fundamental problem facing Trump voters. How do they replace this slapdash democracy with one where they can determine who's votes actually count.

Under our current system, they can only throw out a bunch of roadblocks to make it difficult. The new "Trumpocracy" would likely make voter discrimination a little more structured.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#729

Post by burade »

imperio59 wrote: post #668
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 just…

That's not even close to bullying.

Bullying is more like a 14 year old black kid getting beaten to death by a group of adult white men, who were later acquitted. And you know very well what would happen if the races were reversed.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#730

Post by chess_buster »

crististm wrote: post #647
sbarre wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to be clear about this specific case: There is "evidence" (Twitter posts) coming out that showed that all new users of Parler were shadowbanned by default, until their posts/content were approved by a small group of "right-think" moderators. So while your hypothetical isn't invalid in general, it's really not what was happening here with Parler. What they said they were trying to be was not at all what they were…

The irony. You mean they did exactly what twitter does but on the right wing? They deserve to be digitally obliterated!!!!

No they don't. You are making this up.
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