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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

#951

Post by mmmmmbop »

sellyme wrote: post #918
mmmmmbop wrote: post #849

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For now, don't attempt to overturn a fair democratic election and install an illegitimate government. I honestly have no political axe to grind here, but I distinctly remember how 4 years ago it was a legitimate talking point on the losing side that 'faithless electors' (or 'Hamilton electors') should step up to deny Trump the presidency ([1], [2]). Michael Moore offered to pay the resulting fines for any Republica…

Also an outside observer, isn't the ability to do that the entire point of having electors in the first place? As terrible as the electoral system is, it wouldn't be illegitimate to use it for its intended purpose.

I strongly believe that if Trump or one of his surrogates had tried to bribe electors into certifying him as a winner in 2020, it would have been rightly called an attempted coup and not a legitimate use of the electoral system.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#952

Post by lindenksv85 »

cm2187 wrote: post #829
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 find the "overnight" more shocking than terminating a contract. That they would be so callous toward a customer should make anyone think twice before signing up.

I find it highly unlikely that they didn’t have conversations beforehand. It’s also really black and white - they were proud of their lack of moderation and said it publicly. It’s not like there was a misunderstanding. Plus an org like Parler has its own lawyers. There is no way they weren’t warned of their contractual obligations by their own counsel. They just chose to take that risk.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#953

Post by hotz »

throwaways885 wrote: post #744
bebopcowboy wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t bother man, the morons on this site have already decided what they believe, and it conveniently aligns with their political beliefs.

HN is not full of morons. I do agree with you that Parler is generally misrepresented, but there is plenty of dissenters here. Things aren't as unbalanced as you perceive.

The majority of the crowd here is very left. Most alternative view points get crapped on hard.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#954

Post by lolc »

bob1029 wrote: post #896
lolc wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no reason to believe that Parler has the means to build infrastructure for DDOS mitigation that compares in any way to Cloudflare. If you're not a multihomed AS, you can't even begin to offer what Cloudflare offers. > But, the more of your stack you have under your exclusive physical control the better. Where's the cutoff? Lay your own fiber to your own datacenters? At some point economy dictates that you rent…

Sometimes the trick isn't so much about the technology, but about the regulatory environment and your agility within it. The Pirate Bay is still online, so getting around this kind of thing isn't entirely unprecedented. Something to consider on the tech front would be Starlink. What happens when the orbital layer is independent of terrestrial backhaul under ideal routing conditions? Consider the implications of a dat…

I responded to your claims around DDOS mitigation. At 100 Mbps you're swamped the second a couple cell phones decide to flood you.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#955

Post by ctvo »

obviouslynotme wrote: post #936
ctvo wrote: post #841

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What unfortunate circumstances we find ourselves in when the cost of doing business with a company associated with white supremacists, insurrectionists, and murderers outweighs the benefits so much that other private businesses won't sell them things. Everyone is entitled to force themselves on Apple, Google, Amazon, Twilio, Stripe, et al., right? I find a depressing majority of the people screaming censorship at the…

If just Apple suspended them for a clearly identified infringement of codified policy and then gave them steps to correct it, I wouldn't care nearly as much as multiple sectors of industry banning one company within hours of each other. It's the coordination that is terrifying. When a group of powerful people says, "You have to let me do crazy thing , or the boogieman wins," you must forgive me for having doubts. I h…

> It's the coordination that is terrifying.

Imagine there's a number of farmers in a village who all stop working and go inside when a thunderstorm is imminent. Did they all coordinate to stop working at around the same time or did they individually make a judgement of what's in their best self-interest?

I think our disagreement may be that you don't believe there was a thunderstorm. You may think it was a perfectly clear day, hence their reasoning and timing are suspect, and there must have been some communication. I think there was a thunderstorm of regulatory pressure (imagine more people dying as attacks are planned on an app in the AppStore), employee pressure, reputation / brand damage that was brewing due to the actions in DC on 1/06. This tipped the calculations away from maintaining the status quo, and whatever revenue Parler may have generated (along with other factors, like outcries of bias vs. the right) was no longer enough.

The case for companies further down the supply chain is even more clear: Imagine you're Twilio and are doing cost / benefit analysis on if you should continue your relationship with Parler. Outside of public outrage, employee calls for action, etc.., the other side of the equation is Parler brings in revenue. Your calculations became much simplified due to upstream actors like AWS. Parler has 0 users now and 0 revenue now after Apple, Google and Amazon's actions. Why in the world would you take the continued costs of maintaining your relationship with them in that case? There's still no coordination, only actors making the best decision as the values of underlying variables are updated.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#956

Post by lolc »

heleninboodler wrote: post #914
lolc wrote: post #822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no reason to believe that Parler has the means to build infrastructure for DDOS mitigation that compares in any way to Cloudflare. If you're not a multihomed AS, you can't even begin to offer what Cloudflare offers. > But, the more of your stack you have under your exclusive physical control the better. Where's the cutoff? Lay your own fiber to your own datacenters? At some point economy dictates that you rent…

I'd say if they don't have the means to stand on their own and build all their own mitigations against this sort of attack, then they've bit off more than they can chew. If their goal is to be a free-speech-above-all platform that is definitely going to piss off both infrastructure providers and the world of people who might attack them, then they better have the technical capabilities to back that up or they're goin…

I totally agree. Their situation looks untenable.

I'd love to know the risk-scenarios they considered. Could they imagine getting booted off AWS?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#957

Post by obviouslynotme »

ctvo wrote: post #955
obviouslynotme wrote: post #936

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If just Apple suspended them for a clearly identified infringement of codified policy and then gave them steps to correct it, I wouldn't care nearly as much as multiple sectors of industry banning one company within hours of each other. It's the coordination that is terrifying. When a group of powerful people says, "You have to let me do crazy thing , or the boogieman wins," you must forgive me for having doubts. I h…

> It's the coordination that is terrifying. Imagine there's a number of farmers in a village who all stop working and go inside when a thunderstorm is imminent. Did they all coordinate to stop working at around the same time or did they individually make a judgement of what's in their best self-interest? I think our disagreement may be that you don't believe there was a thunderstorm. You may think it was a perfectly…

I might believe you if this were the first time I have seen something like this happen. After all, it was such an enormous, public incident. But it is not the first time and it will not be the last time either.

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#958

Post by labcomputer »

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…

Do you have any evidence that they are "getting together" or is that just speculation?

Re: Parler drops offline after Amazon pulls support

#960

Post by FeepingCreature »

hayd wrote: post #703
FeepingCreature wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And if all the bakers in town refuse to bake you a cake, should you be able to force one to? Yes. edit: Well, they could also close all of their bakeries. I'm willing to allow them that option.

The same argument applies if you wanted to commission a cake celebrating the holocaust. The distinction must be that anyone (any race, any sexual orientation, etc. etc.) should be able to buy anything "off the shelf" (e.g. a plain cake or wedding cake). But no one should be forced to write/design/create something which they don't want to. My bakery should be allowed to refuse to bake a cake celebrating the holocaust.

> The distinction must be that anyone (any race, any sexual orientation, etc. etc.) should be able to buy anything "off the shelf" (e.g. a plain cake or wedding cake). But no one should be forced to write/design/create something which they don't want to.

I agree with this distinction (no compelled creative labor), but note that this leaves stuff like file hosting, DNS services and data centers squarely on the "off the shelf" side. And you would still be forced to bake a cake for an out-and-loud Nazi. Just not decorate it with an artful "1488 blaze it".

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