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Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

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Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#121

Post by spamizbad »

millzlane wrote: post #36
lisper wrote: post #11

I gotta say, recent events have left me shaken to my core. I thought I believed in free speech, to the point where I started a company dedicated to providing privacy and communications products that were not subject to control by any central authority (that turns out to be very hard!) But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. I…

I think free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by the police or by me. I think free speech is necessary, but not free speech to harass or threaten violence. Free speech including the vile and negative won't make the world a better place. Arguing against the bad ideas will. But I do not think it's the burden…

In the United States we’ve always understood free speech does has its limits: slander/libel, “yelling fire in a crowded theater” — I feel like calls for violence and genocide already fall well out of our boundaries of free speech. But it’s always been understood political speech is unrestricted.

I do think people have cynically exploited this understanding by trying to classify calls for political violence as merely political speech, arguing that as long as the calls for violence have a political angle it’s free speech. And arguing moderating such things censorship.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#122

Post by dan-robertson »

pmlnr wrote: post #114
lisper wrote: post #11

I gotta say, recent events have left me shaken to my core. I thought I believed in free speech, to the point where I started a company dedicated to providing privacy and communications products that were not subject to control by any central authority (that turns out to be very hard!) But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. I…

> But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. One hard truth: it would have been enough to look at European laws made after WWII, and adopt them in the US as well in the first place.

What do you mean by “European”? And what laws are you talking about?

Does this include the laws made in East Berlin or other communist countries? Do you think Le Pen didn’t get into power because of free speech laws? It seems to me like she just didn’t have quite enough support to get in.

What about the laws made in post-communist countries like Poland or Hungary or Belarus? (Or Lithuania or Latvia?)

Perhaps you mean countries like Sweden or Norway? It does at least seems to make the news there when some neo-nazi is punished for what American prosecutors would have to consider free speech.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#124

Post by BlackPlot »

andomar wrote: post #3
api wrote: post #2

If I were running something likely to be deplatformed, I would never consider anything but a multi-cloud solution where no single provider is a single point of failure. It's not that hard to do.

If you were refused by Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Cloudflare, what alternatives are there?

Digital Ocean, VMware,..

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#125

Post by kondro »

api wrote: post #2

If I were running something likely to be deplatformed, I would never consider anything but a multi-cloud solution where no single provider is a single point of failure. It's not that hard to do.

I'm not going to go into all the reasons why a multi-cloud solution probably isn't and why multi-cloud is stupendously difficult (and expensive as you move all that data around) for a scaling business.

But in a situation like this, a company that's likely to be deplatformed, is likely to be deplatformed everywhere. I've seen a screenshot recently of Parler's hardware requirements (when searching new vendors) and it's somewhere in the vicinity of 15,000 cores with more than 400Gbps (sustained) of internal and 100Gbps of external bandwidth (from memory).

The big cloud providers are the only place you can move to when you have those types of requirements (and are still actively growing).

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#126

Post by trident5000 »

millzlane wrote: post #36
lisper wrote: post #11

I gotta say, recent events have left me shaken to my core. I thought I believed in free speech, to the point where I started a company dedicated to providing privacy and communications products that were not subject to control by any central authority (that turns out to be very hard!) But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. I…

I think free speech ends at specific threats or calls to violence. Call me the n word all you want. But if you threaten my life you should be stopped. Either by the police or by me. I think free speech is necessary, but not free speech to harass or threaten violence. Free speech including the vile and negative won't make the world a better place. Arguing against the bad ideas will. But I do not think it's the burden…

Do you mean like when Kathy Griffin was holding up the presidents bloody head with no recourse? Or the summer riots which were heavily coordinated on Twitter? Twitter is still in the app stores. Extremism is on Twitter, Facebook, and all platforms, yet they came together like a mob and eliminated the one they didnt like.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#127

Post by kondro »

ipsocannibal wrote: post #19
andomar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were refused by Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Cloudflare, what alternatives are there?

Pick any country without an extradition treaty with the US and buy rack space there. Parler was easily nuked because its tech was amateur hour not because US cloud providers rule the internet.

Good luck getting your 100Gbps+ sustained (from their actual requirements) of bandwidth in a non-extradition country to your primary audience in the USA.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#128

Post by antibuddy »

lisper wrote: post #11

I gotta say, recent events have left me shaken to my core. I thought I believed in free speech, to the point where I started a company dedicated to providing privacy and communications products that were not subject to control by any central authority (that turns out to be very hard!) But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. I…

My first instinct is to think, that you never believed in free speech in the first place, however I'd like to hear some examples of what shook you to the core.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#129

Post by meheleventyone »

netizen-9748 wrote: post #98
ipsocannibal wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this point of view neglects the emergent properties of a society where millions of people can spew nonsense all at once, at the speed of light, using AI assisted audience targeting. Crackpots and liars have existed since the beginning of time but never before has a technology been designed to so readily amplify and reenforce their nonsense. Never before has a technology been so adept at hiding from you that t…

I think the issue is rather the visibility of the nonsense, as a global species we are still adapting to this new communication medium

It’s not even just the visibility, it’s the direct harm the actions of these people cause. Whether it’s to their own personal relationships or nation states. QAnon should make a lot of people nervous about the state of unfettered free speech and the idea that the counter to bad ideas is more speech.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#130

Post by dralley »

edbob wrote: post #103
lisper wrote: post #11

I gotta say, recent events have left me shaken to my core. I thought I believed in free speech, to the point where I started a company dedicated to providing privacy and communications products that were not subject to control by any central authority (that turns out to be very hard!) But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. I…

What is "a credible existential threat to civilization" to you? The recent riots seem to be more than adequately handled through existing law enforcement procedures. Obviously the police can't prevent every crime, but in this case investigation and prosecution seems to be enough to remove bad actors. We know what the consequences of free speech are, and even if the downsides are amplified 1000x by its enemies, the do…

>What is "a credible existential threat to civilization" to you? The recent riots seem to be more than adequately handled through existing law enforcement procedures.

The crowd (who had previously been chanting "hang Mike Pence") came within about 30 seconds of being face to face with Vice President Pence and some large fraction of Congress (source [0]). They came very close to being overrun before the building was evacuated.

We can't know what would have happened. But we know what might have happened. And it very nearly could have happened.

I'm not ready to call that "more than adequately handled".

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pence-rioters-capito...

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