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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

#191

Post by [deleted] »

soperj wrote: post #153
mercurialshark wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, I'll circle back with a longer form response in a few minutes. In the meantime, I find it interesting that people think down voting my comment will intimidate me into changing the analysis. That's not how legal judgment works. That's not how anything works...

@mecurialshark, likely has nothing to do with trying to change your opinion. Likely has more to do with you posting your credentials as a reason to trust you but giving us nothing more than that.

[deleted]

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#192

Post by kyrra »

minikites wrote: post #88
kyrra wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you listen to Parler's CEO arguing about being shut down[0] (interview with Megyn Kelly), he was saying that their tech rep at Amazon gave no hints that they were in danger of being shut down. It sounded like they were doing a decent job and they tried to remedy Amazon's issues, but Amazon wanted nothing to do with them anymore. EDIT: to add, this is just his take. There is obviously 2-sides to the story, so hard…

What leads you to believe the Parler CEO is a reliable narrator?

100% agree, he has a reason to paint a certain narrative. (I added my edit before you replied I think).

Either way, without knowing the full picture from both sides (like a court case going through discovering to fully put out the communciations between Amazon and Parler), we don't know the answer. We see that Amazon canceled Parler with little external communication. And we see what Parler is saying. Amazon could share what they communicated with Parler (assuming they legally can), then we could see another side to this story.

It would be nice for this court case to go through discovery, then we'll know who said what and when. But until then, we have very imperfect data and have to weigh it as best we can.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#193

Post by joshuamorton »

oh_sigh wrote: post #136
snoshy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This smacks of whataboutism to me. No doubt Facebook hosted large amounts of this activity, but it does not negate the fact that Parler did so as well. Amazon's court filing detailed hundreds of incidents that they had given Parler months to fix.

Crying "whataboutism" is just a meme-y way to shutdown claims of hypocrisy. Husband: Two glasses of white wine in one night honey? You need to cut back for your health's sake Wife: But dear, you drink a handle of vodka every night and have refused any attempts at intervention. Husband: A-ha, classic whataboutism edit: I'd love to respond to the people below me, but HN has decided that one post an hour is too much (de…

Where's the hypocrisy? Should AWS drop facebook as a customer?

I don't think anyone is suggesting that Facebook is free of guilt, but there is evidence that Facebook does at least try to keep their site clean, and for the most part they do. Its certainly possible that Facebook had (in absolute terms) more violence and planning than Parler, but as a percentage of the overall content, it's much smaller.

This doesn't excuse Facebook, they can do better, but it isn't hypocritical to say "the group with 10% violent content that tacitly encourages it isn't okay, while the group with .1% violent content that actively innovates in trying to keep things clean is okay".

Of course, that's only true if FB is actively innovating, and, well, that's questionable (Yann Lecun has made some concerning statements about Facebook's role, or lack thereof, in radicalization).

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#194

Post by whatshisface »

esoterica wrote: post #148
whatshisface wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A business that is heavily involved with local government has to sweat Republican politics, a business that is heavily involved with technology, the media, or other forms of nonstate power has to sweat Democrat politics. I guess it would be nice if companies could simply focus on getting their job done and not have to sweat anyone's politics at all.

Companies have to obey laws and laws are written by politicians. Unless you think companies should be above the law they cannot, and should not be expected to, avoid thinking about politics.

Thinking about the law is a world away from thinking about politics. Companies should think about how to comply with regulations, but they should not be biting their nails over whether the candidate who's backing their chemical plant will give a speech about Marijuana decrimininalization that's convincing enough to secure him the position necessary to force the local regulatory body to change the acceptable limits on effluents so that it becomes possible to continue running a process on an old line.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#195

Post by jwond »

snarf21 wrote: post #15
scohesc wrote: post #4

Parlers 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…

I think the main issue is that people expect free. And free means ads (unless some billionaire is going to fund it out of pocket). And ads means you can't have child porn and terrorism on your platform.

> ads means you can't have child porn and terrorism on your platform.

Doesn’t seem to be true in the case of Twitter

https://nypost.com/2021/01/21/twitter-sued-for-allegedly-ref...

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#196

Post by triceratops »

nostromo wrote: post #152
triceratops wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting how much actual political power the right in America has, despite being about 50% of voters. The Senate and electoral college favor them massively. This means you should expect to have an uphill battle if you want to change any laws that might counter their preferences.

The electoral college actually favored Biden this time. He got 57% of EC votes, which is much higher than his share of the popular vote. This is all pointless anyway for a union of states. Germany is underpowered compared to Luxembourg in the EU by design -- the same is true in the US. Should California ever go back to being conservative, as it was until Clinton, it will disadvantage Republicans just the same.

> The electoral college actually favored Biden this time

I think we're operating on different definitions of "favored". The definition I'm using (and which most of the English-speaking world uses) is "have a fundamental advantage". He won the electoral college narrowly. He won the popular vote handsomely. That's a sign of a thumb on the scale in a pretty fundamental way.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#197

Post by duskwuff »

ravenstine wrote: post #106
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Parler wasn't dropped for making Amazon look bad. Parler was dropped for repeatedly failing to address blatant terms of service violations. AWS still hosts the National Enquirer, the magazine that literally tried to blackmail Jeff Bezos. AWS is hardly in the habit of r…

> Twitter doesn't have perfect execution of their moderation across all of their tweets, obviously, but they are at least making a good faith effort to remove content that has explicit calls to violence. Isn't that mainly due to their amount of revenue? Are newer services supposed to be shut down because they can't(yet?) compete with Twitter on budget for moderation?

Moderation scales with the size of the site. Obviously a tiny little web forum with a few dozen users isn't expected to have a Twitter-sized moderation team -- but if you're at a few million users and growing fast, you're expected to have some plans in place.

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#198

Post by possibleworlds »

throwaway45349 wrote: post #171
iamdbtoo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're completely ignoring the catalyst for this was that a governement insurrection where 5 people, including some cops, were murdered was planned very heavily and also broadcasted on this service.

The capitol stuff was organised on Facebook, not Parler: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25776225 What about the Summer violence from BLM? Dozens of people died, with Twitter being used as a communications hub to attack specific individuals.

Dozens is a bit disingenuous, and you are comparing a protest movement over the course of many months involving up to 20 million people. How does this have any relevance to anything?

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#199

Post by dragonwriter »

mercurialshark wrote: post #110
acdha wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain?

Sure, I'll circle back with a longer form response in a few minutes. In the meantime, I find it interesting that people think down voting my comment will intimidate me into changing the analysis. That's not how legal judgment works. That's not how anything works...

> I find it interesting that people think down voting my comment will intimidate me into changing the analysis.

I find it interesting that you think you can read minds as what expectations downvoters have about their downvotes’ effect on your behavior.

As you say, “That’s not how anything works…”

Re: Judge refuses to reinstate Parler after Amazon shut it down

#200

Post by bredren »

bredren wrote: post #85
nostromo wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting how much soft power the political left in America has, despite being about 50% of voters. Hollywood, Silicon Valley, academia, and the news media all lean left. This means you should expect to have an uphill battle if you want to do anything in these areas that might counter their preferences. I think all this soft power actually hurts the left in America, because our country's default state is a bi…

If it were a dichotomy as you suggest, it might also be worth looking at why “conservative” or “right” leaning groups have not made inroads in these areas. I believe it is because to be break out successful in any medium that demands an array of skill you must not discriminate against people: The company must not have or create a forum for a culture of exclusion. That is to say, it should not matter if a person is ga…

Down voters might find my comment above as not a new idea: The Economist began advocating for Gay Marriage in 1996.

This 2004 article includes discussion of the benefits of acceptance: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2004/02/26/the-case-for-ga...

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