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Parler LLC vs. Amazon Web Services Inc

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Re: Parler LLC vs. Amazon Web Services Inc

#471
post #444
post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/dataracer117/status/1272737061703790592?...

Do you have any sources for Twitter not taking actions against users that sent death threats to JK Rowling ?

Yes, they are all still online, even the verified accounts.

Re: Parler LLC vs. Amazon Web Services Inc

#472
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I followed him on Twitter before he left the intercept and before Substack. I used to respect him. He thought the laptop story was true and barked about it for days. He had no evidence to think it was true, it just was to him. His substack work was after he humiliated himself on Twitter and is largely trying to justify how stupid he was.

I have followed GG's writing for over 10 years myself, actually reading his articles as opposed to twitter headlines, and I think its telling after the effort I went trhough to try to have a real conversation, that is your response. Downvote all you want Biden lackies, it doesnt change the uncomfortable facts!

> Downvote all you want Biden lackies, it doesnt change the uncomfortable facts!

See now I know this is about political identity to you and not about the truth.

Your response here indicates you were never trying to have a conversation at all.

Re: Parler LLC vs. Amazon Web Services Inc

#473
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have followed GG's writing for over 10 years myself, actually reading his articles as opposed to twitter headlines, and I think its telling after the effort I went trhough to try to have a real conversation, that is your response. Downvote all you want Biden lackies, it doesnt change the uncomfortable facts!

> Downvote all you want Biden lackies, it doesnt change the uncomfortable facts! See now I know this is about political identity to you and not about the truth. Your response here indicates you were never trying to have a conversation at all.

Not true at all. I bet you even think you know what my political identity (what a horrid combination of words!) is just because of the phrase, but in all probability you are wrong. On the contrary, I came with quotes from the man the discussion was about, you are the one who came with comments of no substance.

Projection at its most obvious.

Re: Parler LLC vs. Amazon Web Services Inc

#474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No 'obscene usernames' is actually hilarious to me. The bastion of free speech won't even allow users to choose their own handles.

"Remember what the MPAA says; Horrific, Deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don't say any naughty words"

I've always liked this interpretation of MPAA ratings.

“If a man is pictured chopping off a woman’s breast, it only gets an R rating; but if, God forbid, a man is pictured kissing a woman’s breast, it gets an X rating. Why is violence more acceptable than tenderness?” — Sally Struthers

Re: Parler LLC vs. Amazon Web Services Inc

#475
post #61

If you’re a business, do you really want to be on a provider that can pull your card with little to no notice? That’s a lot of power. The boot is coming down hard right now. The cloud is looking like a risky bet.

As a business we only do business with vendors that don’t host controversial sites due to risk from boycotts and negative press. I picked AWS because it was a safe choice because of actions like kicking off Parler.

This is a good point and I agree with it. The market will sort this out better than we could with regulation. I do think that some may see this is a reason to go back to their own data center. It's also a reason why some content creators moved off Patreon to their own subscription services. Although to rebut my own point, that doesn't seem to have affected Patreon much at all.

Re: Parler LLC vs. Amazon Web Services Inc

#476
post #75

If you’re a business, do you really want to be on a provider that can pull your card with little to no notice? That’s a lot of power. The boot is coming down hard right now. The cloud is looking like a risky bet.

"The cloud" is irrelevant to this. Get your own servers -> datacenter won't host them Get your own datacenters -> no bandwidth providers will connect you Make your own ISP/bandwidth provider -> nobody will peer with you

That may very well happen. But the equal and opposite response here would be to setup your own infrastructure.

We may very well see a "soft secession" as we have left providers and right providers and then we began to geographically locate ourselves around these providers.

Re: Parler LLC vs. Amazon Web Services Inc

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning Ayatollah Khomeini from Twitter would probably cause an international incident. He might declare a fatwa[0] against Twitter, the US, or both. If none of these events happen, there's still a risk of Islamic terrorists attacking Twitter's offices. I'd probably leave his account in place too. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatwa

This makes sense on a personal level, but it highlights the hypocrisy of AWS decision

What is hypocritical about AWS's decision to terminate Parler?

AWS doesn't make any claims to providing universal service and like most (if not all) service providers they can terminate service for a variety of reasons.

I have no inside information but it was probably a combination of some of the following factors.

1. Compliance with the AWS acceptable usage policy. AWS says that Parler didn't comply with the AUP. All the facts won't come out unless this lawsuit goes to trial and that seems unlikely. Parler's CEO doesn't seem to think moderation is important so it's easy to believe that they didn't put a lot of effort in it. It's also possible that they can't afford to comply with the AUP but that isn't Amazon's problem.

2. Cancel culture. It was only a matter of time before AWS started getting bad PR for having Parler as a client. Petitions for dropping them were already circulating internally and externally. It's easy to say that you shouldn't drop clients in response to pressure but there is a point at which doing so is a rational decision.

3. Liability. Parler was allegedly used for planning illegal activities. If another significant attack occurs then a class-action lawsuit will pursue both Parler and AWS for contributing to the attack - this happened with the September 11th attack. The costs of defending or settling this lawsuit could easily run into the millions.

Re: Parler LLC vs. Amazon Web Services Inc

#478
post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Downvote all you want Biden lackies, it doesnt change the uncomfortable facts! See now I know this is about political identity to you and not about the truth. Your response here indicates you were never trying to have a conversation at all.

Not true at all. I bet you even think you know what my political identity (what a horrid combination of words!) is just because of the phrase, but in all probability you are wrong. On the contrary, I came with quotes from the man the discussion was about, you are the one who came with comments of no substance. Projection at its most obvious.

Yet you presumed to know that anyone downvoting you must be a "Biden lackey".

Re: Parler LLC vs. Amazon Web Services Inc

#479
post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My NDAs constrain me from saying as much as much as I'd like, but it's a mistake to think that the key to fighting abuse is "algorithms". The heart of it is always human judgment. It starts at the executive level to set policy. That policy needs to be carefully socialized to users. The user need ways to report problems. And then you need trained staff to judge the reported content. Algorithms can help, of course. But…

Humans are incredibly biased in making judgements like this. How do you “train” a person to enforce a standard that goes against their inherent biases? Seems like the more objective the process can be shifted (by moving away from human decisions), the more effective/fair the process becomes. Anyway, it sounds like you may work in this space, and, therefore, might have further insight, which I am very interested in he…

Unfortunately, there is no real objectivity here. Machine learning systems are fed large numbers of human judgments, are tuned based on human judgment, and then are deployed when other humans think them ready.

The way you get reasonable consistency, whether it's humans or machines, is by establishing clear standards, using them for training, and then continuously monitoring results. It's not perfect, of course. But nothing is.

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