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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

#321

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

newfriend wrote: post #274
triceratops wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US is not a direct democracy, it is a representative republic. I'm aware of that. And that structure favors one side more than another. This is not a controversial statement - the numbers (y'know, facts and logic) back that up. States are lines on a map. In the current setup they have more influence than the actual people living in those states. Do you seriously not see how that can lead to disproportionate rep…

> States are lines on a map. Saying this doesn't make them less important, it just shows a childish attitude. Local and State governments and representation are important parts of the Republic. Dollars are just numbers in a database. Will you give me all your money? Or is it only certain "made-up" things that are important to you? > Do you seriously not see how that can lead to disproportionate representation of some…

Seem more accurate to say:

  * electoral districts are represented by the House [0]
  * states are represented by the Senate
which then begs the questions

  * who represents the people as a whole (if anyone) ?
  * who or what does the President represent?
[0] since representatives are elected solely by the voters within a district, with no reference to voters in any other district.

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

#322

Post by sjwright »

fjabre wrote: post #297
takeda wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had to lose by 7 million votes to actually lose, I would say they have quite advantage. As another user said: "The Senate is split 50-50, but the 50 Democrats represent 41 million more people than the 50 Republicans"

We are a representative democracy for a reason. It was designed that way. You can't change the rules of the game because you're losing. The United States was designed as a representative democracy on purpose by the forefathers. That is fact.

Just because something was designed for a specific purpose a few hundred years ago doesn't mean it serves that same purpose today. Situations change. The Constitution was designed to be amended.

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

#323

Post by cat199 »

ojnabieoot wrote: post #45
unethical_ban wrote: post #3

I'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…

I am very sympathetic to the idea that ISPs should be common carriers, but definitely not colos and platforms like AWS. Let’s use an old-fashioned analogy. An ISP is like a post office, and people’s letters should not be meddled with (outside of violent threats or pursuant to a legal criminal investigation). In particular, ISPs are relevant to most individuals and ISPs (should) have respect for individual rights. But…

> Let’s use an old-fashioned analogy. An ISP is like a post office, and people’s letters should not be meddled with (outside of violent threats or pursuant to a legal criminal investigation). In particular, ISPs are relevant to most individuals and ISPs (should) have respect for individual rights.

The post office also allows you to keep mail at the post office and in PO boxes, which are regulated roughly the same as mail destined for residences/businesses - I would put anyone who runs a datacenter/servers for other people in the 'PO box provider' category, so I don't think this analogy really works

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

#324

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

fjabre wrote: post #295
joelkevinjones wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by saying that democrats took over the post office? I assume you mean the USPS? The postmaster general was appointed by Trump. The senate until just last week had a Republican majority. Exactly how did the Democrats exercise power to "take over"?

Dems pushed the use of the USPS as a general voting system. Terrible idea. The USPS was not designed this way. Dems knew they could leverage their population dense cities to win this using USPS. To say that one side is clean and the other is corrupt is clearly incorrect. They both cheat. They both cheat a lot. The dems just cheated better this time.

You have no evidence of cheating in this election that has been accepted by any court.

You have no evidence that USPS function "favored" Democrats.

You are perpetuating the lies that have been told by the former president and his supporters for the last 2+ months.

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

#325

Post by Terretta »

kyrra wrote: post #192
minikites wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

They shared it, in their court filing on 12 January:

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664...

“In mid-November 2020, AWS received reports that Parler was hosting content threatening violence, in breach of the agreement. Executive 2 Decl. ¶ 4. On November 17, 2020, seeking to better understand Parler’s approach to content moderation, AWS provided Parler two representative examples, asked whether “this type of content ... violate[s] [Parler’s] policies,” and asked for “more detailed information on [Parler’s] policies and processes for handling and mitigating” such content. Id. & Ex. D. Two days later, Parler responded that it had referred one of the examples to its “regular contact for investigation.” Id. Ex. D. Over the next seven weeks, AWS reported more than 100 additional representative pieces of content advocating violence to Parler’s Chief Policy Officer, including...”

And some emails, from the Exhibits:

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.294664...

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

#326

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

fjabre wrote: post #293
gowld wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Each state gets numbers by its population. This is false, and the core of the criticism of the EC. Each state gets 2 votes independent of its population, which is biased toward small population states, and for over a century the definition of states was constrained by a compromise to protect slavery .

California has more electors than Vermont.

You're still missing the point. The lowest number of electors a state can have is three. Mathematically, this biases the EC in favor of low population states.

The same approach (all states having two senators) biases the Senate in favor of low population states.

This appears to have been intentional on the part of the founders, but that doesn't make it right.

[ EDIT: s/two/three/ ]

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

#327

Post by mancerayder »

nostromo wrote: post #42
throwaway45349 wrote: post #5

As 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…

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…

Hold on, they lean Democrat, not "Left." I know it sounds pedantic, even subjective, but it's very important to point out that the Democrats are pro-business, not particularly pro union, they are pro Wall Street, and they generally are pro Defense spending and engaged in wars abroad in every term going back thirty years. The fact that they talk about race and gender could arguably make them "culturally left" which very much makes them feel left-wing, even radical to some. A European, or almost anyone else in the world would call them centrists or center-right.

Silicon Valley is right-wing on economics and defense of monopoly, and left when you talk about race and gender equity in the board room.

You can see echoes of this on HN where many people support restrictions of speech if they come from a private platform ("laissez-faire" approach to private property), but still call for a shut down of hate speech and a correction of "misinformation".

The Democrats' cultural mores center around postmodernist principles of "language makes reality" "there are power imbalances" "the power imbalances intersect around race and gender" and finally "correcting how we talk about these topics will help the marginalized." ... But, we're reminded, Twitter and AWS and Facebook are private property, and you should read and follow the TOS ("laissez-faire").

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

#328

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

fjabre wrote: post #297
takeda wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They had to lose by 7 million votes to actually lose, I would say they have quite advantage. As another user said: "The Senate is split 50-50, but the 50 Democrats represent 41 million more people than the 50 Republicans"

We are a representative democracy for a reason. It was designed that way. You can't change the rules of the game because you're losing. The United States was designed as a representative democracy on purpose by the forefathers. That is fact.

"representative democracy" does not require the structure of the US senate, nor state districting policies, nor the electoral college.

There are many other representative democracies that do not have any of these "features".

Also, I thought a reply ago, you stated that the left was winning, not losing.

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

#330

Post by takeda »

joshuamorton wrote: post #193
oh_sigh wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ex…

Facebook and Twitter also have their own data centers, so it's not like AWS had to chose between Facebook, Parler or Twitter.
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