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Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

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Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#901

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…

All well and good. But say for instance you lived in nazi Germany, would you have the right to protest? Would you have the right to say things that are outside of the overton window? You would not have the right, and your opinions would be spat upon. And yet they would be true and right for you. In your mind you would have every right to express yourself and undermine the government outside of democratic means. The p…

What exactly is your point, other than ad-hominem attacks?

OP made no claims to know that “good” is other than

> Normal, political speech is just fine. Incitement to violence, no.

Struggling to see a world that would consider incitements to violence as a “good” thing. I mean sure it’s possible, but so far away from our reality as to be entirely pointless as a basis for argument.

> nazi Germany, would you have the right to protest? Would you have the right to say things that are outside of the overton window? You would not have the right, and your opinions would be spat upon.

What does Nazi Germany have to do with any of this? That was a government suppressing a minority population and invading Europe. Your not suggesting that AWS is about to attempt the same thing?

> It is right that people with a belief strong enough to force them to action are forced to action

Glad we agree that people at AWS who have a strong belief to drop Parler are allowed to act on those beliefs.

> The world is unfolding as it should.

Then what’s your problem? Are you saying that AWS deplatforming Parler is preventing the world from unfolding as it should?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#902
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…

Did parler really try and overturn an election? Or did some of the people that use the site walk around a building?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#903
post #812

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"legal" in a democracy is something that only a court can decide. I don't know what was Parler's size, but in any website with millions of visitors a handful will post aweful things each day. Were those 98 posts posted by the same user? Did anyone report them and Parler refused to take them down? Were they popular or downvoted with few views?

Everyone is responsible for knowing if their actions are legal or not. If you shoot someone on the street and use the defense that you thought it was legal because a court didn't tell you that it wasn't in advance, then you're going to have a bad time.

There is no evidence I have seen that Parler was doing anything illegal.

Note that my understanding is that hosting someone else’s illegal speech is not in itself illegal (if it was, the buzzfeed article would also need to be taken down).

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#904
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…

> who decides if the democratic election was fair? The several states, of which all 50 had certified their votes well in advance of January 6th. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if most of the votes being counted were even cast in public.

Just as an example, was the 2016 election 'fair' in your eyes?

There were claims that Russians hacked the election, voting machine issues, voter fraud and suppression. Democratic leaders objected to the legitimacy of the election results. There were even protestors who interrupted the electoral vote counting [1].

Did the big tech companies miss a chance to censor those peddling theories of an unfair election in 2016? Or do we have a moving definition of what constitutes a fair election and is allowable for questioning depending on which side won?

[1] https://www.npr.org/2017/01/06/508562183/biden-to-democrats-...

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#905
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…

Why bit chute? Aren't they just a peertube alternative?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#906
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…

Here's the deal from my perspective - if you build a platform you are responsible to have tools to take down clearly illegal activity on the platform, such as plotting the murder of politicians, terrorism, money laundering, etc.

This seems... reasonable to me, even though I understand some tools can/could be misused. In the end its not great that we have to sort of depend on societal ideas of what is right/wrong in the form of social/reputational pressure to moderate things, but at the moment we're at least a bit more likely to not turn that on marginalized groups than at any other time.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>attempt to... install an illegitimate government I keep seeing this claim, and it's quite a substantial claim, but I don't see equally substantial evidence to support it. I see evidence of disgruntled LARP'ers forming an angry mob and causing more trouble than anyone would want, but I don't see evidence of an armed rebellion in a sustained firefight or siege, with all the explosions, rubble, chaos, and loss of life…

They literally erected gallows on the grounds of the capitol, they literally marched through the building chanting "hang Mike Pence". The entire basis of the Q Anon conspiracy is that Donald Trump is preparing to destroy the deep state and retain power. Spend more than a few minutes browsing around Gab (you can just look at the top posts) and you'll see explicit references to overthrowing the government. You can abso…

Didn't BLM install gallows outside Jeff bezos house or something like that? Were they trying to overthrow Amazon?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#908
post #692
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

https://hereistheevidence.com/election-2020/stats/ Most lawsuits were dismissed without looking at the evidence.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#909

So is it legal to boot out a store from a plaza, selling offensive items? I think Amazon is in a very difficult position, do or don't, it is doomed. But I guess it will have to make a call on this one, to avoid looking like standing on the wrong side by the coming administration.

That happens all the time to head shops and sex shops.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#910
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…

> However, now that the precedent is set, I would expect the bar to be lowered going forward.

Why is that? In general, a slippery slope argument is a poor one.

> Even for businesses that are not in such politically charged areas, I can easily imagine getting inadvertently tangled up in some popular issue and having vendors become targets of online activist

I can imagine a lot of things, I'm sure you can too. But what matters is, is it likely? If, let's say, Slack got taken down by this because it was found that sound rioters used it to coordinate, I would imagine there would be an absolutely huge backlash even today with a situation as dire as the capitol riots.

I can't answer your last question, and it is a good question. But I do agree with AWS and others: the answer is not to do nothing.

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