Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
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Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#2Here's the denial of the TRO:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qhXD-4Kaw5dCEBv0dUM8buygEKg...
Parler hasn't lost the case, just a TRO that demands reinstatement on AWS, but the ruling on the TRO requires the judge to tip their hand about the case, and Parler is going to lose.
I don't think you even need to read the AWS AUP to know that Parler has no real case here. To buy Parler's contract claim, you'd have to believe that Amazon's lawyers are so stupid that they set out a TOS for the world's largest hosting provider that didn't give AWS the right to boot customers, which is something AWS --- really, every hosting provider --- has to do all the time. You almost have to not know anything about the hosting business to think there could be a case here.
But if you need to read a judge laughing Parler's claims off, well, now you can. Real "based" energy in excerpting the AWS AUP in their complaint and clipping it right before the clause that gives AWS the right to terminate service without notice to customers who violate their AUP. The judge, uh, noticed.
(As the judge points out, among the many problems with Parler's restraint of trade argument, there's the fact that AWS doesn't host Twitter's feed.)
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#3I've been trying to come to grips with the societal impact of echo chambers, "hate" speech, and the obligations vs. rights of sites and hosting providers.
So far, my take is that websites have less obligation than hosting. It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues - I am leaning more and more to the idea that colos, IaaS and ISPs should be considered common carriers, and that only a court order should get a site booted off the web entirely.
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#4Parlers goal of being the alternate free speech platform is horrendously thought out.
The same companies and that they are trying to remove influence from (Silicon Valley - amazon, twitter, facebook, etc.) are the same companies that they're doing business with.
Gab is ridiculous and I get a very religious "holier than thou" (lol) vibe from them. Their founder(s) are very puritanical and will likely not survive the next few years.
The true future of free speech is through federated platforms/services similar to how email servers were back 20-25 years ago. People have traded freedom for convenience over the past couple of decades and it shows.
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#5As much as I don't like Parler's digital death sentence from Silicon Valley, they should've known this was coming and prepared. It doesn't take a genius to know that such a controversial website is going to get dropped, even if it's just because it makes the webhost look bad.
Yes it's unfair that Twitter gets away with hosting way worse content, but life is unfair, that doesn't mean you stick your head in the sand and pretend the risk of de-platforming never existed.
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#6As much as I don't like Parler's digital death sentence from Silicon Valley, they should've known this was coming and prepared. It doesn't take a genius to know that such a controversial website is going to get dropped, even if it's just because it makes the webhost look bad. Yes it's unfair that Twitter gets away with hosting way worse content, but life is unfair, that doesn't mean you stick your head in the sand an…
If you listen to the Megyn Kelly interview with Parler's CEO, they did expect this and had a second entirely different hosting provider lined up. They would have made the move by the deadline too, except the second hosting provider also dropped them due to extreme pressure.
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#7I've been trying to come to grips with the societal impact of echo chambers, "hate" speech, and the obligations vs. rights of sites and hosting providers. So far, my take is that websites have less obligation than hosting. It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues - I am leaning more and more to the idea that colos, IaaS and ISPs should be considered common carriers, and that only a c…
> It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues
They booted Parler off for violence issues. One may personally disagree about where to draw that blurry line, but I think there's more than enough plausible deniability here. This is not the trigger of a grand slippery slope. If Amazon drops a company purely for non-violent political differences, by all means, lets raise those pitchforks.
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#8I've been trying to come to grips with the societal impact of echo chambers, "hate" speech, and the obligations vs. rights of sites and hosting providers. So far, my take is that websites have less obligation than hosting. It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues - I am leaning more and more to the idea that colos, IaaS and ISPs should be considered common carriers, and that only a c…
If you choose to just call it "speech issues", it sounds worrying, but when you're a little more precise, "shutting them down for failing to remove calls for violence including many instances pointed out to them directly by Amazon's lawyers" sounds pretty reasonable.
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#9Not really a surprise given the weakness of their arguments.
If you’d like to hear a lawyer read and comment on their complaint, I recommend https://youtu.be/FL7r-Nt5j50
Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down
#10Parlers goal of being the alternate free speech platform is horrendously thought out. The same companies and that they are trying to remove influence from (Silicon Valley - amazon, twitter, facebook, etc.) are the same companies that they're doing business with. Gab is ridiculous and I get a very religious "holier than thou" (lol) vibe from them. Their founder(s) are very puritanical and will likely not survive the n…
> People have traded freedom for convenience over the past couple of decades and it shows.
I'd argue the completely other way: people have traded convenience for freedom. The convenience of using the Internet for has massively eroded freedom of speech.
It's been immensely convenient for tens of thousands of people to be able to say any kind of harmful trash on the Internet without suffering any negative consequences and that's what they have been doing for years now, and so now we all pay the price.
The term "freedom of speech" has been appropriated by alt-right and modern Nazi movements and is now associated almost strictly with, which means that it is now feasible to call this freedom a real and actual risk to human life and take real steps towards curbing that freedom in general, even for people who are not abusing it to actively work towards harming other people.